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By Helen Klein
12/06/2006
City Councilmember Letitia James contended that touch screen
technologies could disenfranchise some voters.
As New York moves forward to select new voting machines,
groups across the city are raising concerns about the touch screen models that
are among those being considered.
“The problem is that not all of the machines are equal,”
noted State Senator Velmanette Montgomery during a briefing on the various
systems being considered by New York State that was held in the State Office
Building, 55 Hanson Place.
“Some are more advantageous as relates to the security of
votes, some as relates to simplicity, so people are not turned off when they go
to vote. I want to make sure, in the event there is a question around voting
and we need to do a recount, that is a record we can refer to, to verify the
results of any election,” Montgomery asserted.
The League of Women Voters has come out against the current
crop of touch screen voting machines, also known as DREs (Direct Recording
Electronic), in favor of paper ballots and optical scanners.
Why? Over the past few years, said Adrienne Kivelson, the
group’s city affairs chairperson, the number of problems that have arisen with
what is essentially a new technology have cast into doubt the efficiency and
integrity of the touch screen voting machines.
In the most recent election, she noted, one Florida
congressional race where the candidates are apart by 383 votes is still not
decided because 18,000 votes that were recorded for other elections in one
county were not recorded in that race. Other counties had two to five percent
of those who came to the polls not voting for the congressional race, while the
county where the problem occurred had a differential of 13 percent, leading to
questions about what happened to the vote.
Vote security issues have been cropping up in the past
couple of years, Kivelson said, because they had not been a major consideration
when Congress promulgated the Help America Vote Act (HAVA in the aftermath of
the controversial 2000 Bush-Gore election in Florida. At that time, she said,
the focus had been on getting states to use voting machines that were
handicapped-accessible and recountable, and which provided a second chance to
vote, in case of error.
“The regulations didn’t emphasize security,” noted Kivelson,
“because they were not aware of problems.” However, she said, as more and more
states turned to such equipment, “More problems arose.”
While New York has been dragging its heels in terms of
selecting new voting machines (it is the last state in the country to comply
with HAVA), there may be a benefit, contended Kivelson. While the state now has
a scant 10 months to get on board (it must have handicapped access in each
polling place by September, 2007), it can learn from mistakes made in other
states, she said.
One of the big problems, according to Kivelson, is that the
type of machines mandated by New York law (which must have a paper trail and
which must show the full ballot at once) have not yet been produced except in
prototype.
“If we’re going to get new voting machines, we want
something we can be secure in,” she stressed. “That why the League of Women
Voters supports the paper ballot optical scan option. We think it’s a very
secure system because you’re not voting on an electronic machine. You’re voting
on a paper ballot, and the electronic machine is counting the votes.”
Theresa Hommel, the chairperson of the Task Force on
Election Integrity of the Community Church of New York, stressed that
electronic voting machines, “Are not video games. We need to see more than a
touch screen that lights up when you touch a candidate’s name.” Simply seeing
the name light up, she stressed, “Doesn’t tell us whether the vote was recorded
correctly inside the computer’s memory.”
It’s also impossible to tell from the image on the screen,
Hommel added, “Whether the vote is ‘jumping’ to another candidate inside the
computer. What’s on the screen is not a legal ballot.” With paper ballots that
are fed into an optical scanner, the ballot is a tangible thing, she noted;
with DREs, the ballot exists only somewhere inside the computer. Even if there
is a paper trail, that is not a legal ballot either, Hommel said.
These are major concerns, stressed Hommel, who said that she
has been a computer professional for over three decades. Because the software
in the DREs is proprietary, no one except the employees of the company making
the equipment knows how it works. This is also a major issue, she said. “With
electronic voting machines there are things that should be observed and can’t
be observed.”
Cost is also a factor. Purchasing a sufficient number of
DREs to accommodate the flow of voters is much more expensive than purchasing
optical scanning equipment for them, Hommel said.
While New York will get either $53 or $72 million worth of
federal funding to put to the purchase of new voting machines, the cost of DREs
can be as high as $106 to $132 million, while the optical scanning equipment
will cost in the neighborhood of $35 to $38 million, she said.
Lower estimates of cost for the DREs rely on buying fewer
pieces of equipment, But, Hommel said, “With the amount of equipment they hope
to buy, we will have lines like Ohio (in the 2004 presidential election).” And,
to top it off, Hommel said that the life span of DREs is only five to 10 years.
How did the task force come up with its conclusions? Hommel
said that they had had informal observers at a recent timing test held by the
state Board of Elections who had estimated, she said, that each voter took approximately
4:59 minutes to vote on the DREs. “With a steady flow all day, that’s only 12
people per hour,” she pointed out, “but we don’t have a steady flow all day. We
showed definitively why we will run out of time between 300 and 400 voters per
DRE.”
A recurring concern is that new voting machines, if they are
not easy to use and understand, may effectively disenfranchise a portion of the
voting public.
“The majority of voters in this district are seniors,”
remarked City Councilmember Letitia James, “and although a lot of them are
computer-savvy, a lot are not, and a lot are intimidated by computers. So, if
we go to an electronic system, we people of color, and seniors, are going to be
left out.”
The city’s Board of Elections will be making a decision as
to which voting machines to purchase later this year. Election commissioners in
each borough will vote on the matter, which is why speakers at the briefing
urged that residents contact the two Brooklyn commissioners, Jeanette Gadson
and Nancy Mottola-Schacher, at the Board of Elections, 32 Broadway, New York NY
10004, and make their preference known. There will also be a public hearing on
the matter on Tuesday, November 21st, at 4 p.m., at the Board of Elections, 42
Broadway, 6th Floor.
©Courier-Life Publications 2006