Newswatch

Article Information Article ID: 19292 Pub: iSeries Network Dept: Newswatch Date: September 01, 2004  Printer Friendly Other Articles By: Cheryl Ross   Article Feedback: • Submit feedback about this article • Read feedback about this article

The Verified Voting Foundation is a watchdog group founded by David Dill, a professor of computer sciences at Stanford University, to lobby for federal legislation regulating electronic voting and to raise awareness of all the things that can go wrong with electronic voting — especially when there's no paper trail to verify that the votes recorded actually reflect the voters' choices.

Franz signed on to the organization's TechWatch program, which will keep track of any issues that occur at electronic polling places around the country. It's a topic that's near and dear to Franz's heart.

"Our local elections official in Greensborough has been one of the leading proponents in the country of electronic voting," he says. "We feel like he's almost been a beta site for some of the manufacturers. We've been doing electronic voting for four or five years. Since the issue came up, he's taken a lot of hits for not having a secure system."

The words "electronic voting" immediately raise the specter of hacking and tampering — with reports of backdoor programs that allow election results to be manipulated. But although questions of hacking, viruses, and election tampering are serious concerns for Verified Voting, the biggest issue is what happens if a voting machine malfunctions?

Pamela Smith, the nationwide coordinator for the Verified Voting Foundation and VoterVerified.org, points to a problem that occurred in her neighborhood of San Diego County, California, where during the March 2004 primary, a new electronic voting system experienced major malfunctions across the 1,600-precinct, 4,200-square-mile area. "People were being turned away or made to wait," she says. "They were essentially disenfranchised by the fact that the electronic voting machines weren't working properly. ... In some cases it took hours [to get the machines up and running]. By then, you had voters who'd already gone to work and couldn't get back in time to vote that day."

If a voting machine conks out in the middle of an election, how do you know the votes already placed on the machine will be counted, and counted accurately? "The poll workers, who are usually volunteers, don't know what to do with those machines," Franz says. "They would likely unplug them and move them to the side. And nobody really knows if those votes that were initially put into the machine — did they get counted somewhere?"

You can't have the machines connected to a network, because that increases the possibility of hacking. "These are all basically PC, Windows-based machines, and are subject to the same problems of any Windows machine, which are well known to be hackable," Franz says.

Verified Voting believes the only real way to safeguard those votes, and ensure that the votes recorded actually reflect the way the populace voted, is to have a voter-verified paper trail. The voter needs to see proof that his or her vote was recorded accurately, and a paper copy of that vote must be collected at the election site in case a recount is needed.

"Essentially, doing a recount or audit isn't meaningful if you don't have a clear record of voter intent," Smith says. "If the machine works properly, you might assume that it recorded the voters' intent. But, unfortunately, there are lots and lots of incidences where the machines don't work properly, and there are some where we can't really tell because you don't have any sort of independent record to confirm it against."

Some electronic voting machines can print out the day's tally of votes after polling closes, Smith says, but "it's our contention that that doesn't really do anything except use up paper, because it doesn't show the voter that their vote was recorded in this way."

In the upcoming November election, Smith says, about 30 percent of the nation's voters will be using direct record electronic devices (DREs), which use touch-screen or push button devices to record the vote electronically without a paper record. "Only in one state will those machines have the capability of printing out a voter-verified paper ballot," she says. "Nevada is the only state in the country that's required their vendors to make that printing capability to add to the touch-screens that they're using in time for November."

What the Verified Voting folks would like to see in November is for polls to use optical-scan ballots that record the vote electronically, but have a paper record filled out by the voter. Preferably, the polls would have scanning systems on site so that they could make sure the ballot was correctly filled out and give the voter a chance to correct any mistakes. But even if the ballots are taken to a central location to be scanned, the paper ballots would allow the election to continue uninterrupted even if the equipment fails, and they would provide an auditable record of the votes for recounts.

However, despite the group's efforts, HR2239, a Congressional bill introduced by Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ) that would mandate an election paper trail, is tied up in committee and likely won't be approved in time for the November elections. Although 44 percent of House members co-sponsor HR2239 or similar legislation, others say electronic voting issues should be left for the states to decide.

Other groups are hoping for last-minute legislation to set up some guidelines. California, for instance, came up with a safeguard that's simple and practical for other states to adopt, even with just about a month to go until the election. California is requiring precincts that use electronic voting with no immediate paper trail to give voters the option of voting on a paper ballot instead. Since all precincts use some sort of paper balloting for absentee voting, it shouldn't be much more difficult for them to print up extra ballots, Smith says.

Meanwhile, Verified Voting is still recruiting techies to join Franz and about 1,500 others on TechWatch, which will provide a realtime election-incident reporting system around the country. "The net result of all that information capture will be to improve election processes as we get down the road," Smith says, "and hopefully even solve some of the problems in realtime on election day."

TechWatch will be watching certain hotspots, such as Florida, more closely than others. "They have, I think, 15 counties that are using touch-screens that don't have a voter-verified paper trail," Smith says, "and it's one of the states where it's likely to be closely contested, so that makes it a natural for this sort of thing."

Meanwhile, Franz, who has a background in security and has worked on accounting programs for numerous iSeries customers, would like to see the same security, accountability, and audit capabilities built into voting systems as are built into business systems. He points to cash registers that keep a paper copy of all sales and invoices used to verify electronic accounting systems.

"I just can't imagine doing any less than we would do for our own company in keeping the books," he says. "You want something that's auditable. To me, it makes perfect sense that if you wouldn't run a company this way, why would you run an election?"