Here's a vote for verifiable elections
By Diane Carman
Denver Post Columnist
I don't blame them one bit. The Citizens for Verifiable Voting have a point, even if they are a royal pain in the neck for Boulder County elections officials.

After the Florida fiasco of 2000, confidence in the most fundamental element of the democratic system has plummeted.

When people start believing that elections are being stolen by the manipulation of vote-counting systems, respect for government and the rule of law is seriously damaged.

So when Boulder County began taking bids to replace its problem- plagued punch-card voting system, the birth of the CVV as a democratic advocacy group was in every way a positive sign.

Even Boulder County elections manager Tom Halicki thinks so, and in the past year they've made his job its own special kind of hell.

The overhaul of Boulder's voting system was overdue long before Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002. That measure required all counties to replace punch-card systems in time for the 2004 elections.

So Boulder officials named a citizens committee to review proposals and fulfill the requirements of the federal law.

While most people assumed early on that the systems would be replaced with electronic touch-screen voting, CVV raised some alarming concerns.

Computer scientists from Johns Hopkins and Rice universities last year found that one of the most common systems - produced by Diebold, a company in Ohio - is "far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts."

Hackers could infiltrate the computer software and, theoretically at least, change election outcomes.

With no independent record of votes cast, it would be a perfect crime. If evidence of hacking was uncovered, since there are no independent voting records, it would be impossible to verify vote counts.

An election would be wrecked.

This is why Joe Pezzillo, entrepreneur, software developer and all-around stubborn guy, managed to organize about 50 wary voters into CVV last year to lobby for "trustworthy" voting machines in Boulder.

CVV recommended a system layered with post-modern redundancy. It would use paper ballots counted by an optical scanner with backup hand counting of any questionable ballots and additional hand counting of a representative sample of the votes just to make sure the vote count was accurate.

If all goes as expected, CVV will get most of what it has requested when the county commission votes on the matter next month. Everything but the hand count of a representative sample of votes is included in Halicki's plan, which will cost "a little over $1 million," he said.

"I'm not persuaded that it's easy to hack into the (electronic) systems," he said. But if the public doesn't have confidence in the system, that doesn't matter a bit. So he's a convert to the renewed faith in paper ballots.

The county is considering an optical scanning system from Hart InterCivic, a company headquartered in Texas with an office in nearby Lafayette.

It relies on paper ballots similar to those used in the mail-in elections in recent years. The ballots will be read by the scanners, Halicki said, and a bipartisan panel of elections judges will evaluate any questionable ballots, properly mark and file corrected ballots, and hand count when necessary.

Even though most citizen groups and many members of CVV have endorsed the paper ballot system, it's far from perfect.

Sandy Adams, Denver elections commissioner and an unapologetic fan of touch-screen voting systems, said all you have to do to appreciate how much trouble paper ballots create is to look at the problems last fall with mail-in ballots.

"People make mistakes when they mark the ballots," she said. Some mark the space near the wrong candidate or overlook races entirely. "And some don't sign them when they send them in."

Then officials have to guess what voters really meant when they crossed out erroneous votes and circled others, or drew arrows to other votes, or voted twice in one race and not at all in another.

Paper ballots also can get damaged, Adams explained. Markings smear if they get wet. The paper can get jammed in the scanning machines. Lots of things can go wrong.

"Besides, it's so labor-intensive," she said.

But even in the midst of a budget crisis, this is no place to economize. Too much is at stake.

Pezzillo is right when he says, "The citizens deserve trustworthy elections." For a democracy, it's a minimal requirement.

"We're interested in making sure we have the best possible elections, no matter how much it costs or how long it takes," he said.

I'm with him.

As counties across the state face similar decisions, that's the one lesson we should all learn from the tenacious folks from CVV.

We're worth it.