No Doctored DRE
Democrats use computer hysteria to get out the vote.

Tuesday, July 27, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

BOSTONYou don't have to go far here to find a Democrat who says the 2000 election was stolen. John Kerry is one of them. He claims a million African-Americans nationwide had their votes stolen and he won't let it happen again.

On Sunday, he followed that up by saying that his legal SWAT team is looking at "each and every district" with possible voting problems: "We may or may not be bringing challenges publicly in the course of the next few weeks," he said in Ohio. He mentioned that in Florida some voters are being removed from the rolls if they didn't respond to a letter from election officials. Since many states routinely send such mailings to those who haven't voted in years, we are in for an avalanche of litigation if that's the level of scrutiny Mr. Kerry is applying. He might even have to ask former trial lawyer John Edwards to lend a hand.

Many delegates here buy into a more bizarre conspiracy theory: that unscrupulous "Manchurian Programmers" could manipulate the new electronic voting machines that 35 million Americans will use in November. They note that Walden O'Dell, the CEO of Diebold Election Systems, sent a personal fund-raising letter last year to Republicans stating his goal was "helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president." This month, Moveon.org held rallies in 19 states to demand that new electronic machines print paper receipts to ensure an accurate count, something only Nevada will be able to implement by November. Democratic State Rep. Chris Smith of Florida says he is using concerns that votes will be lost or manipulated as a get-out-the-vote tool for John Kerry: "I tell them to bring an extra person to the polls."

It's true some states have moved too quickly using new federal money to buy Direct Recording Electronic voting machines (DREs), which work like an ATM. Several states have reported software failures, and California officials have accused Diebold of using uncertified software and misleading them. But exaggerating the problems with DREs will only fuel a litigation mindset that could make Florida 2000 look like a moot court.

Joe Andrew, chairman of the Democratic National Committee until 2001, is a senior adviser to a biotech firm that owned several Internet companies. He says the conspiracy theories aren't healthy and last month he told the Maryland Association of Election Officials that "When it comes to electronic voting, most liberals are just plain old-fashioned nuts." While conservatives were skilled at coordinating their messages, he added, "that does not mean there is a vast right-wing conspiracy trying to steal votes in America, as the loudest voices on the left are saying today."

Mr. Andrew said the people obsessed about DRE manipulation are either computer experts with impressive technical knowledge but little practical experience with elections or left-leaning computer users who are conspiratorial by nature. He noted with regret that they have been joined in their hysteria by prominent Democrats who "are rallying behind the anti-DRE bandwagon in a big election year because they think that this movement is good for Democrats."

They're wrong. The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights has generally supported electronic voting because the voters who are most likely to be helped by DREs are (a) the disabled (they can vote without assistance); (b) the less educated (they're comforted by the machines' similarity to the ATM); (c) the elderly (you can increase the type size) and (d) citizens with limited English skills (the machines are multilingual).

Indeed, whatever problems DREs have must be compared to other existing systems. In last year's California recall election, punch-card systems didn't register a valid vote on 6.3% of all ballots cast. For optical scan systems, the under-vote rate was 2.7% and for DREs it was only 1.5%. As for the theories that DREs could be programmed to change an election outcome, Mr. Andrew dismissed them by saying, "the liberal Internet activists are bonkers." John Lott, an American Enterprise Institute economist who has studied election systems, adds that some of the obsession about DREs, "sounds a lot like an effort to anger some people into voting while providing the basis for lots of election litigation if the results are close."

 

The leading crusader against DREs is Bev Harris, a journalist from Seattle, who has co-authored a book called "Black Box Voting." But she suffered a blow to her credibility this month when it was revealed that last year she had joined computer programmer Jim March in filing a "whistle-blower" lawsuit in California that seeks monetary damages from Diebold for machine failures there. The lawsuit, known as a qui tam because it rewards those who help the government identify fraud, would allow Ms. Harris and Mr. March to collect up to 30% of any award. "This is about money nowa case of the capitalist system at work," Mr. March told the AP.

Their lawsuit has touched off a firestorm of criticism from other anti-DRE activists. They note that last year Ms. Harris wrote on the Web site Democratic Underground that she and her colleagues "came to the conclusion that doing this for money was the wrong thing to do . . . we aren't soiling ourselves with Qui Tam money." David Allen, Ms. Harris' co-author and publisher, is deeply disappointed she has allowed critics to question her motives. A liberal Democrat, he thinks she and others exaggerate the danger of hackers stealing an election. "I think this whole debate has been cast too much in partisan terms," he says. "The incompetence of the voting machine companies is real enough. We would never guard our currency at the U.S. Mint the way we guard the currency of democracyvotes."

Ms. Harris responds that she has legal disputes with Mr. Allen and believes other Internet activists have filed qui tam lawsuits that are under seal. She says any money from a settlement with Diebold would go to a non-profit foundation investigating electronic voting. She is employed by that same foundation.

Michael Shamos, who was the official examiner of electronic voting systems for Pennsylvania and Texas for 20 years, says there has not been a single verified incident of tampering with an electronic machine. For six years, he's posted a challenge on the Internet offering $10,000 to anyone who can tamper undetectably with a DRE machine under real-world conditions. No one has claimed the money. "The worst thing we could do is listen to some of the activists, abandon the new technology and return to means of voting that are even less safe and accurate," he says.

Fixes for the real problems with DREs are in the works. Woefully inadequate federal standards for testing voting machines are being toughened. A system is being developed in which each voter would receive a record of his choices that would be put into a code only decipherable by election judges. After the polls closed, all receipts would be posted on the Internet. Voters could use their serial number to find the image of their receipt, and make sure it matched the one they got at the polls.

 

But some states aren't waiting. California is allowing some counties to use DREs only if they provide paper ballots for anyone who wants one, and letting others use optical-scan systems. The activists aren't giving up, though. In Snohomish County, Wash., 50 protested at a rally this month against electronic machines. County Auditor Bob Terwilliger accepted their petition of 20,000 names. But he said he couldn't help chuckling as he perused it. The "signatures" were electronic and on a computer printout he couldn't verify.