Election Reform Advocates Call for Paper Back-Up

By Rick Dawson and Loni Smith McKown
I-Team 8

An I-Team 8 investigation has uncovered concerns about the accuracy, reliability and security of new voting machines. Now there's new information that could affect the presidential election in the fall.

This spring, the federal government plans to hand out $2.3 billion to states for new voting equipment.? I-Team 8 told you who's getting rich: a few companies with partisan ties. We showed you that voting machines don't always count correctly and many times there's no way to recount votes. Plus, we found there are no safeguards to protect against tampering.? Wait until you hear the latest.

In a protest called "The Computer Ate My Vote," Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream is calling for change.

?It is an abomination that in this, the richest, most technologically advanced democracy in the world, we don't seem to be able to install voting machines which will guarantee the credibility of our presidential election in 2004,? said Cohen.

Cohen wants state election officials to demand that touch screen voting systems like the one used in Johnson County have what's called a verifiable paper trail.

?The voter ensures that what is on the paper actually represents what he or she intended to cast as a ballot, and then after the fact it can be counted,? said Eugene Spafford, Purdue computer expert.

Marion County voters have a paper backup because the county chose these optical-scan machines. ?We really rushed into trying to solve the problems that we had in Florida in 2000,? said Doris Anne Sadler, Marion County clerk. ?But in an effort to solve all of them, we may have rushed into a little bit of a situation where we're creating more problems, different problems than we had before.?

Sadler says security is one of those problems, and she says it?s a trend throughout the country.

Marion County does have touch screen voting systems. More than 600 of them are designed for disabled voters.? But they're on the shelf, unused because they contain software that hasn't been approved by the state.?

Three other counties unknowingly used technically illegal software in last November's election. And there's another problem, this time with ballot design.
The question: How do counties that grouped candidates by party on the old lever machines now do that on Marion County's new machines?

?If we have more than five presidential parties and we are required to use a party-column ballot layout style, then we will not be able to use the optical-scan machine,? said Sadler.

Not using the machines means every ballot in Marion County would be counted by hand.

?A county of this size with 914 precincts and 5,000 poll-workers trying to manage a presidential election on paper ballots would be my worst nightmare,? said Sadler.

In the past three presidential elections, four parties have been on the ballot. But adding the Green Party or another independent party this fall could push it past that five party threshold. The candidates have until June 30th to file.

One more note: Ben and Jerry's came up with a special ice cream flavor just for this protest it's called "Fudged Election Confection."

Will Your Vote Count? - Check out the stories in this section for more on voting machines, glitches and excerpts from interviews with voting machine company CEOs, plus plenty of links on the issue of election reform.