Keeping elections clean in November
Tuesday, 6, 2004

Although it sounds like a publicity stunt by those still upset about the way the presidential election was conducted and counted in Florida in 2000, it is true that a number of people are concerned about the integrity of the Nov. 2 presidential election.

Nine members of Congress, led by U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, last week asked the United Nations to send observers to monitor the presidential election.

The request is a suggestion that the United States, which has been the model for election integrity, has become little better than emerging Third World democracies or corrupt regimes when it comes to running honest elections.

Democrats are still steamed at losing the 2000 presidential election in Florida, where many people were improperly turned away from the polls, especially in precincts that had high minority populations and leaned Democratic. And poorly maintained punch-card voting machines in many precincts rendered hundreds of ballots unreadable.

Since then, Congress has enacted the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, which orders the replacement of punch-card voting with more reliable methods and provides funding to the states to do that.

In Michigan, the funding will be used to provide a uniform optical scan balloting system. In optical scan voting, voters fill out paper ballots, which then are fed into an optical scanner. If the ballot is filled out improperly, it will spit it back to the voter for correction. Correctly completed ballots are counted.

The beauty of Michigan's optical scan system is that it provides a paper trail, something that will allow for a reliable recount in the event of disputed results.

But that's not the case in many states, which are using their HAVA funding to go to touch-screen computer voting, minus a paper trail. In the event of computer errors or deliberate manipulation of the programs that count votes, there is no way for voters to find out if their votes counted.

In November, as many as 50 million Americans are expected to cast votes on paperless computer terminals.

The record on paperless computer balloting so far is not good.

In January, in a special election for a state House seat in Florida, 134 people who went to the polls at paperless terminals apparently cast no vote for any candidate, at least according to the computer. The race was decided by 12 votes.

In North Carolina's 2002 general election, 436 ballots were d from paperless machines in two counties because the computers indicated their memories were full and stopped counting votes.

In the March Democratic presidential primary in California, more than half of the polling places did not open on time because of computer problems. California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley banned the use of the Diebold Inc. vote-counting system after he discovered it had uncertified software that could jeopardize the outcome of the election.

Diebold's Chief Executive Officer Wally O'Dell, a contributor to President Bush's re-election campaign, said in a GOP fund-raising letter last August that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." Ohio is considered an important swing state in the presidential election.

Thirty-five counties in Ohio plan to use Diebold's touch-screen machines in November. Although the Ohio legislature has enacted a law that mandates voting systems must have a paper trail, that requirement won't take effect until 2006.

That leaves many Georgia Democrats with a chill. In 2002, the state of Georgia went to touch-screen voting with no paper trail. Two incumbent Democrats U.S. Sen. Max Cleland and Gov. Roy Barnes lost their bids for re-election, even though exit polls suggested they were leading.

Despite the appearance of ethics problems when a maker of election hardware and software pledges to deliver the vote for a particular candidate, there isn't any real evidence against the Diebold company, which will provide the equipment that about 8 percent of Americans will use to vote.

But if election officials are truly committed to clean elections, they'll insist on a voting system with a paper trail.

Although bills have been introduced in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate that would amend the Help America Vote Act to require that voting systems have some kind of paper trail, Congress has not acted on it.

We hope this November's elections are free of taint.

Otherwise, it will be time to call the United Nations in to monitor future elections.