One person, one vote, but many problems
by Boris Melnikov for the Daily Trojan
About once in a geologic era, an event changes one's perception of a whole organization. For me, that event happened last November when California became the first state to mandate that touch-screen electronic voting machines, now in common use around the country, producing a paper trail when the vote is cast.

I had no inkling that I would ever say this during my lifetime, but here goes: The California legislature did something right for once. Before I regret ever making that statement, let me qualify it. The state legislators should be applauded for their decision, but plenty of obstacles remain before this new, much more accurate way of voting becomes prevalent all over the country.

After the debacle of the presidential elections in 2000 ? a period that forever etched the phrase "hanging chad" into America's consciousness ? people started to realize that a new method of tabulating the votes cast was needed. The Help America Vote Act, passed by Congress in 2002, set aside $3.9 billion over three years for local and state governments to upgrade their voting equipment. Naturally, the technology mentioned most often was the electronic voting machines.

Electronic voting has many advantages over old paper or punch-card ballots. The results of the election can be tabulated in a fraction of a second. The machine will also be a lot more accurate than your average overworked local precinct volunteer who gets stuck counting the votes at one o'clock in the morning.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the computer leaves no ambiguity about whom the person voted for. No longer will election officials have to measure the circumference of a chad that was partly punched to gauge whether the voter intended to punch it or not. All voters have to do is press a name button on a computer screen and confirm their choice.

In other words, a faster, more accurate and less ambiguous system for voting is available. But as with all new technologies, there are a number of detractors.

Computer consultant and activist Jim March, along with writer Bev Harris, have filed an injunction against California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley and registrars of 18 counties that will use electronic ballots in the upcoming California primary on March 2. They claim that electronic voting technology in its current fraud is susceptible to fraud and other potential abuses.

"We're not trying to stop the election," said March in an interview to the Los Angeles Times. "We just want to make sure it's secure."

While security is a valid concern, the reason why March and Harris are suing is to prevent the state from using voting machines made by Diebold Election Systems, a company that produces many of the computer voting machines.

Activists have long derided that company's voting machines as containing flaws in design and software. A report, published last July by the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, said the computer voting machines have numerous holes that can be exploited.

In addition, Diebold had accidentally posted the source-code for its voting machines on the Internet in January 2003. That seeming misfortune gave ammunition to its critics who claimed that the system was compromised and needed to be scrapped.

However, the public source-code may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. In fact, California should require all companies who supply it with electronic voting machines to reveal the source-code they used. For if one person may see a potential vulnerability, another person may spot it too and alert the authorities to the flaw, thereby preventing potential voter fraud from occurring.

That point was made by Silicon Valley writer Paul Boutin in a column on slate.com. "The only sure check against an outlaw wacko programmer," Boutin writes, "is an army of wacko programmers poring over every line of his work." The public availability and accompanying scrutiny of the source code will also assuage the fears of the paranoid part of the general population who may think that a sinister plan by the Republicans to rig the elections is afoot, since the Diebold CEO has also contributed to President Bush's reelection campaign last year.

But as an insurance, it would still be nice to have a tangible proof, like a piece of paper, that the person voted the way he or she did.

This is where the printed ballots may come in. Because of the law passed by the Legislature, election officials are hard at work thinking of ways to make sure that paper ballots will not be tampered with.

One suggestion, proposed by Rebecca Mercuri, an electronic-voting expert at Harvard University, would be to let the voters see the printed paper ballot through glass after they've voted on the touch screen, to verify that the vote was recorded properly. Then, the ballot will into the ballot box where it will stay in case it is needed for the recount.

Thus, electronic ballots are proving to be more secure than their punch-card cousins that gave the nation a couple of very turbulent weeks almost four years ago. Opponents of electronic voting machines might object, but unless the nation wants another Florida recount, touch screens are the way to go at the polls.