For voters, seeing is believing

NEVADA WILL PUT TOUCH-SCREEN VOTING PRINTERS TO THE TEST

Mercury News Editorial    15 August 2004

A printer one that lets voters verify on paper the electronic votes they cast on a touch-screen voting machine will remedy much of the controversy surrounding electronic voting.

Unfortunately, such a device won't be at the polls in Santa Clara County or most of America in this presidential election. But it will make its debut next month in the primary elections in Nevada, and last week, we took a peek at it.

The good news: At least at the Mercury News, Sequoia Voting Systems' new touch-screen printer worked just fine.

We've said for 20 months now that many of the suspicions surrounding touch-screen systems would evaporate if the voting companies produced and Congress required a voter-verified paper trail for electronic voting. They haven't, despite revelations of security gaps and coding weaknesses of touch-screen systems.

And so the nation is heading into a close presidential election with a significant risk of another fiasco like the one in Florida in 2000. Only this time, the crisis won't be over what you can see punch-card tallies with chads but what you can't. Without a paper copy that voters have seen and confirmed, there'll be no way to fully resolve charges of manipulation, fraud and error with touch-screen machines.

Sequoia, which sold Santa Clara County its new voting machines, is the first of the big voting companies to bring a voter-verified printer to market and complete federal testing. Because of delays that aren't all Sequoia's fault, it's just now undergoing certification in California, so Santa Clara County won't have a paper trail in November. Instead, all eyes will be on Nevada, the only state to demand a paper trail for the election at hand.

Some companies, like Diebold Election Systems, have dragged their feet and continue to insist a voter-verified paper trail is unneeded. Some election officials have predicted huge costs (Sequoia's printer will initially add $800 per machine) and chaos at the polls: paper tears, printer jams and added confusion.

As with any new technology, there'll be some glitches. But Sequoia appears to have come up with a relatively simple, reliable system. And success in Nevada should break down stubborn resistance to what should become mandatory for every touch-screen county in America.