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Home » Press / Media » Media Coverage » Senators Question E-Voting Paper ...
Senators Question E-Voting Paper Trail
by Grant Gross, CIO-Asia.com
June 22nd, 2005
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Calls
for the U.S. government to mandate a voter-verified paper trail with
electronic-voting machines ran into opposition Tuesday from two
powerful members of a Senate committee, with one senator objecting that
a printout would discriminate against blind people.
IDG News ServiceWashington Bureau
Updated: Jun 22, 2005 10:49 AM
Calls for the U.S. government to mandate a voter-verified paper trail
with electronic-voting machines ran into opposition Tuesday from two
powerful members of a Senate committee, with one senator objecting that
a printout would discriminate against blind people.
Voting accuracy advocates, and some lawmakers, have repeatedly called
for printers to be attached to electronic-voting machines. Advocates of
voter-verified paper trail ballots say they allow voters to check a
printout to see what happened inside the direct electronic recording
machines (DREs).
But Senator Trent Lott, the Republican chairman of the Senate Rules and
Administration Committee, suggested attaching printers to existing DREs
could cause equipment problems on Election Day. "I'm leery of attaching
[a printer] on the side," he said. "It seems we're adding a level of
complexity."
Senator Christopher Dodd, the committee's ranking Democrat, objected
because a paper-only verification system couldn't be used by the blind
and some other people with disabilities.
"By insisting on paper, you're denying people who cannot read because
they cannot see," Dodd, of Connecticut, said during a hearing attended
by several people with disabilities. "I would vehemently oppose any
legislation that excludes the ability of those people to have the right
to the same thing that those who can read have."
Legislation that doesn't give equal rights to disabled people "is not
going to happen," said Dodd, author of the voting reform legislation
that became the Help America Vote Act of 2002. If paper-trail ballots
are required, audio verification should also be required, Dodd said.
Five bills introduced in Congress this year would require
voter-verified paper ballots with DREs. A bill introduced by Dodd would
require a choice of paper, audio or visual verification with DREs.
Dodd drew support from James Dickson, who is blind. Dickson, vice
president for governmental affairs at the American Association of
People with Disabilities, said he's had one election worker question
why he wanted to vote for a certain candidate, and he's had another
election worker refuse to help him get all the way through the ballot
because the polling place was busy. People with disabilities don't want
promises that they will have equal voting rights "just around the
corner," he said.
"I voted secretly for the first time last year," Dickson said. "For the
first time, I was equal, my vote was secret, and I knew who I voted
for. Do not treat us like second-class citizens."
But DRE paper trails would give voters an assurance that their votes
were being counted correctly, said supporters of the technology. Even
if blind people could not use printouts, the majority of voters would
have an assurance that an e-voting machine correctly counted their
votes, said Senator John Ensign, a Nevada Republican. Nevada used
paper-trail ballots with DREs during the 2004 general election and saw
them widely accepted by voters, Ensign said.
"There is no way to build a completely secure electronic system,"
Ensign added. "All I'm trying to do is make sure the machines are kept
honest."
Two computer scientists disagreed over the effectiveness of
voter-verified paper trail ballots during the hearing. DREs are tested
before and after elections, and election officials have better forensic
tools to find errors on DREs than they have on other types of ballots,
said Ted Selker, chairman of the CalTech/MIT Voter Technology Project.
And in the unlikely event that a group of hackers compromise e-voting
machines, they also would be smart enough to program the machine to
give false printouts, he said.
E-voting machine problems continue to be minor compared to voter registration and other problems, Selker added.
But David Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford University,
said without some kind of verification, voters have no idea what's
going on inside a DRE. "It's not good enough for elections to be
accurate, the public has to know that they're accurate," he said.
"Unfortunately the current paperless e-voting machines being sold now
are totally opaque."
Although e-voting machines are not connected to the public Internet,
there are dozens of ways for employees of DRE vendors to program
vote-changing schemes into the machines, Dill added. "If we want to
make a trustworthy paperless machine, we don't know how to do it," he
said.
Dill called on Congress to push optical scan ballots, which he said are
more secure than DREs. Dodd, however, questioned why the U.S. would
move backward and abandon newer technologies for paper-based optical
scan systems.
Most security warnings about DREs have not actually happened, said
Conny McCormack, registrar-recorder and county clerk for Los Angeles
County, California. Los Angeles County uses DREs for voters who chose
to vote before election day, and the county had more than 3 million
voters -- more voters than 41 U.S. states -- during the 2004 general
election.
Los Angeles County has had no problems with DREs since it began using
them in 1999, McCormack said. A federal requirement for paper trail
ballots would drive up the cost of DREs by as much as 35 percent and
could prevent states from adopting future voting technologies, she said.
"The fact is, the existing DRE systems without the paper trail have a
proven track record," she said. "The criticisms that DRE systems are
more susceptible to tampering are completely unfounded. There is not
one scintilla of evidence to support these claims."
Printers attached to DREs can jam and their installation and
maintenance will require additional poll worker training, she added.
"Simplicity, not complexity, is what makes elections work," she said. |
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