Touch-screen voting
Critics warn of post-election problems if no paper trail exists
BY Michael Hardy
Published on Sept. 6, 2004 Federal Computer Week 

In many ways, politics in the United States are unlike those in Venezuela. The South American nation last month held a recall election for President Hugo Chavez, who survived an attempted coup in 2002.

But in another sense, that election may foreshadow the upcoming election in this country. The Venezuelan vote was conducted using electronic voting machines that generate a voter-verified paper trail. Chavez's opposition claimed that the victory, in which 59 percent voted to keep Chavez in power, was rigged. But international election monitors were able to conduct an audit by comparing the paper record to the electronic vote tallies.

"Without a paper trail to audit, there would have been no way to reach any closure on this situation," said one American observer on the scene in Caracas, Venezuela's capital. "There would be no paper trail, and you would be left with the assertion that some kind of manipulation happened. You have a safe bet that something like that is going to happen in November" in the United States.

The Venezuelan referendum is just one more chapter in the controversy over direct recording electronic (DRE) machines, most of which use a touch screen to record votes. A U.S. company, Smartmatic Corp., made the machines used in Venezuela. Each machine has a built-in printer to create a paper record. Another U.S. company, AccuPoll Inc., also makes DREs with built-in printers. Other vendors, mostly basing their products on older technologies, are trying to add printers to some models, with mixed results.

Nearly 30 percent of American voters will use touch-screen machines in November, almost none of which will generate a paper record. Defenders say the machines provide electronic means to recount contested votes. But skeptics continue to call for the addition of a voter-verified paper record that could be stored securely and used as an additional check.

The Carter Center and the Organization of American States oversaw the Venezuelan election and conducted the audit, which found no discrepancies between the electronic votes and the paper records.

But the audit did not end the controversy, because the opposition party refused to take part, said David Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford University and a leader in VerifiedVoting.org, a group that advocates paper trails.

Recounts and audits need to be observed by all sides in a contested outcome, Dill said. The refusal of Chavez's opponents to participate "reduces the degree of certainty we can have about the results," he said. "It also reduces the legitimacy of any complaints."

Smartmatic's machines performed as intended, said company spokesman Mitch Stoller. In addition to creating a paper record, the system can perform multiple electronic backups of the data, so there are several ways to cross-check results.

"It's very, very simple," Stoller said. "It is an extremely auditable and transparent system. It can be checked in seven different ways."

DREs do include some internal electronic cross-checks, by recording voting data in more than one memory system, for example. Dill said such techniques are not as useful as a voter- verified record but do have some utility.

"It's the sort of thing that can show problems but can't show nonproblems," he said. Some irregularities could escape detection by the electronic methods.

The debate about touch-screen voting has been brewing since at least last year, when Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) introduced a bill that would amend the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, which required the paper records. The bill remains in committee.

Opponents of the paper record — including industry trade groups, disability advocates and many local elections officials — say that no standard exists to ensure that various precincts are recording the data in a consistent manner. They also worry about mechanical failures, paper jams, and the additional training and work required to implement printing systems.

DREs offer significantly better ballot access for voters with disabilities and for non-English speakers, which a required paper trail would undermine, according to the four bipartisan authors of HAVA, in a letter they sent to colleagues in April to oppose Holt's bill.

But many computer scientists and activists are worried about the prospects of deliberate fraud and computer error that could affect election outcomes.

Sequoia Voting Systems Inc. officials have developed a paper trail capability for their machines, and the state of Nevada will use the systems this year, said company spokesman Alfie Charles. However, he said that no amount of safeguards would ever satisfy all voters.

Americans would not complain in an election that was decided by as wide a margin as in Venezuela's, he said. "That's a cultural difference in the fundamental trust of government," he said. But when the results are close, he added, "it doesn't matter if the election was conducted properly or not, somebody will cry foul."

Charles Greenwald, a spokesman for the Information Technology Association of America, said that the paper trail should be considered only one of several protections against machine error and fraud. ITAA officials have generally opposed efforts to require a paper audit capability for the November 2004 elections.

"Any election requires a set of formal processes and well-trained people," Greenwald said. "Election machines must be vetted as part of such a thorough process, as they are at numerous levels within the U.S. system of elections."

But according to Aviel Rubin, a Johns Hopkins University computer science professor, any safeguard that does not let voters confirm that the recorded results reflect their choices is not sufficient.

"If the recall vote [in Venezuela] had been close, they could have done a manual recount, and they still can," he said. "In November, if our presidential election is close, and if there is any controversy, we will not be able to perform a recount of about 30 percent of the votes."

Use of DREs for a simple yes or no vote was probably unwarranted, Rubin added. "Given the complexity of our ballots relative to those in the recall vote in Venezuela, electronic voting makes more sense" in the United States, he said. "But without voter-verifiable paper, we will be much worse off than they were if the election is close and controversial."

Any post-election dispute is unlikely to turn into "an unmitigated disaster," said computer scientist Rebecca Mercuri, a Radcliffe Institute Fellow at Harvard University.

"What worries me is that there will be problems — and the problems will be very subtle — that may not get noticed," she said.

To an extent, the value of paper records lies in voter perception, said Mark Gray, a research associate at Georgetown University.

"The perception that something could occur is probably more important than the reality," he said. "When the only records are digital, it's easier to make accusations of fraud."

If the outcome of the November election is close in some states, and current polling suggests it will be, states that used paperless DREs will have fewer means to recount the results, Dill said. They could consider exit polling and the electronic backup systems that the machines do provide.

Some California senators are working on legislation to move up a deadline for requiring that voting machines produce a paper audit trail. The lawmakers want the requirement to become effective January 2006 instead of November 2006, the date set by California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley. That would put the new systems in place before the state's 2006 primary elections.

Shelley has taken a tough stand on touch-screen voting machines by decertifying one model from Diebold Inc. and imposing strict security rules on election districts that plan to use touch-screen machines.

In the November elections, 11 California counties will use touch-screen machines from various vendors, said Darren Chesin, consultant to the California Senate's Elections and Reapportionment Committee. "The paper trails provide the voters themselves with the confidence that the machine is accurately recording their choices," Chesin said. "Otherwise, you've got to trust the machines."