New voting system falls short of verifiable

By BRETT BURSEY Opinion in The State   10 August 2004

While The State has devoted considerable ink to the debate over the Election Commission’s plan to buy new voting machines, much of it has been in support of the $46.5 million acquisition. Those critical of the state’s plan have been labeled Luddites, accused of playing Chicken Little and dismissed as part of an “Internet-based movement of paranoia.” Those charges are unfair and deflect rather than address the serious questions voters have about the process used to procure the machines and the efficiency of the machines themselves.

If you are among the 33 percent of South Carolinians who care enough about who will run the school house, the State House and the White House to actually vote on Nov. 2, you assume that your vote will count.

Don’t be so sure.

In the 2000 presidential election, 3.4 percent of votes cast in South Carolina were not counted, twice the national average. That adds up to 48,060 missing votes. These “residual ballots” include “no-votes,” over-votes and technical failures.

In Williamsburg County, 14.5 percent of the voters who colored in the circles on optical scan systems could have stayed home, because their votes weren’t counted. Richland County voters should wonder if their electronic vote was one of the 1,629 lost. Mine could have been one of the 3,322 punch card votes that were spoiled in Lexington County.

Clearly the system needs fixing. Unfortunately, the voting machines the state intends to buy do not ensure that the vote cast is the vote recorded and will do little to reduce the number of residual ballots. Simply put, the only way to make sure a vote is counted the way a voter intended is to allow voters to verify their vote before they leave the poll.

The State argues that allegations of impropriety in the bid process are so “ridiculous as to be unworthy of serious comment.” This might be true if election officials in Arkansas and Louisiana weren’t serving time in jail for accepting bribes from Election Systems & Software, the same company that won South Carolina’s bid, and the same company that our state Election Commission director once worked for as a subcontractor.

The commission is opting for efficiency over accuracy in not requiring a paper trail. And while state Attorney General Henry McMaster said the law does not mandate voter-verifiable ballots, that doesn’t mean they are a bad idea. Such a system would go a long way toward restoring voter confidence at a time it is sorely needed.

Some myths have circulated about voter-verified ballots:

• The receipt would encourage vote buying. Reality: The receipts, or ballots, never leave the polling place but are deposited in a box that is kept in case of a recount.

• Only the new e-voting machines protect the voting rights of the visually impaired. Reality: All systems, including the optical scan, can have a machine in each precinct that would “talk” to the voters and verify their vote.

• The system would cost too much. Reality: If the Election Commission had included a provision for voter-verified ballots in its original bid, it would not have cost significantly more, if it raised the price at all. Lower-tech systems provide a paper trail at a significant savings.

• Paper ballots would take too much time. Reality: Voters who take the time to vote want to know that their vote counts. They know computers crash, and that they can be hacked. To safeguard their vote, surely South Carolinians would wait the extra moment it would take to print out a ballot. We do it at the ATM or grocery store. Why not at the polls?

The bottom line is that the state is rushing to buy and implement a computer network voting system that doesn’t produce a verifiable ballot, does not allow for a manual recount, and does not address the problem of lost votes.

The claim that the state will lose $2 million if our system is not in place before November is a self-induced emergency because South Carolina did not ask for an extension, as most other states did. And while federal and state legislation has been proposed that would require voting machines to produce a paper trail, we are preparing to spend all our grant money on a system that won’t.

Mr. Bursey is the director of the South Carolina Progressive Network, a statewide coalition of advocacy organizations. Reach him at network@scpronet.com.