Hall: Electronic voting is a step forward - if taken with care
Thad Hall Opinion Salt Lake Tribune 12 September 2004
In 2000, Americans were given a crash course in election administration as they watched officials try to count paper ballots. Given the lessons from Florida and other states, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act and encouraged states to ditch punch cards and move to voting systems that are accessible to people with disabilities - our nation's largest population of disenfranchised eligible voters - and have the ability to inform voters about errors on their ballots.
Not surprisingly, many states have chosen to move to electronic voting technologies since they can best enfranchise the disabled and also allow voters to confirm their votes before they are officially cast. Utah is currently considering such a move as well.
The idea is logical: If paper ballots were the problem in 2000, then electronic voting will solve the problem. However, electronic voting has become highly controversial because of problems associated with implementing this new technology.
The problems that have occurred in several localities have raised questions about whether electronic voting should be used at all. Critics see electronic voting as unreliable and potentially facilitating election fraud. The most extreme critics see electronic voting as part of a vast right-wing conspiracy to allow Republicans to steal elections from Democrats. These critics have generally coalesced around the idea that all electronic voting machines should have a so-called voter-verified paper trail, or VVPT.
The idea behind VVPT is that voters would use an electronic interface to vote, but would then compare their electronic vote with a printed paper ballot. The VVPT would confirm that the electronic machine had not cheated and recorded votes incorrectly, and would provide a paper backup should the electronic machines malfunction.
The idea of a VVPT is logical; it creates a paper record of the electronic ballot. However, it is wrong to think of paper as a panacea. After all, the 2000 election debacle occurred because officials could not determine how to interpret marks on paper ballots. Introducing a paper add-on to an electronic system may make voters feel better, but it is not clear that doing so will improve the process.
For example, VVPT could complicate polling place operations - printers are more complicated than an electronic voting machine - and create questions about which ballot box, the electronic or paper one, is official. It also fails to recognize that electronic voting machines already store recorded votes on multiple storage devices on a voting machine, creating an electronic audit trail within the machine.
There have also been many successes with electronic voting systems as well that tend not to be discussed. In Georgia, the very high error rates on paper systems in 2000 were much lower with electronic voting in 2002. There, switching technologies captured more than 77,000 votes in 2002 that would have gone uncounted in the past. In some counties, the rate of uncounted votes went from more than 4 percent to under 1 percent. Additionally, electronic voting has allowed voters with disabilities to cast a secret ballot for the first time.
Legally, the courts have sided with states in their move to electronic voting. In Maryland, all experts involved in a recent case recognized that electronic voting machines are more accurate than paper ballots. The key, the court noted, is to find a way to make electronic voting as secure as possible, something that Maryland is already doing.
So how should states like Utah move forward? Here are three issues:
First, election officials should carefully test machines before they purchase them and consider leasing, not buying. Too often, equipment is purchased without first being tested by poll workers and voters. Local officials need to be comfortable that the equipment they buy is easy to use and works in real election situations.
Second, election officials need to think through how electronic voting equipment will affect the management of elections. You cannot necessarily just replace a paper-based system with an electronic one. Instead, it is critical to think through how an electronic system will change things such as setting up and closing down poll sites, the training of poll workers and the security surrounding ballots.
Third, election officials should develop an ongoing process for testing the functionality and security of voting systems. Risks change over time and election officials need to continually monitor their voting systems.
Fortunately, Utah officials are currently conducting a careful evaluation of just how such a move to electronic voting would affect state elections. This includes testing equipment for usability and security.
Since 2000, all voting technologies have shown that they have unique problems when they are implemented. Although there has been quite a bit of focus on electronic voting, paper-based voting systems continue to have problems. Given the strong potential for enfranchising voters that comes with electronic voting, election officials should move to this new technology, but do so carefully to avoid the pitfalls that others have encountered.
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Thad Hall is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Utah. He lives in Salt Lake City.
