The Hand-Marked Ballot Wins for Accuracy
By TOM ZELLER Jr. for the New York Times
September 19, 2004

After the pandemonium over dimpled and pregnant chads in the 2000 election, nearly everyone agreed it was time to rethink old vote-counting ways. But the stampede to touch-screen voting was not inevitable.

Another, demonstrably more reliable technology was already on the rise: optical scan voting, introduced in some parts of the country in the late 1970's. By the 2000 election, optical scanning - which involves marking a paper ballot that is ultimately read and counted by a computer - had overtaken all other voting methods as the most common way to vote in the United States. This year, optical scan systems will be used in more than 45 percent of all counties, according to Election Data Services, a political consulting firm in Washington.

After the 2000 election, a study by the Voting Technology Project, a joint effort by the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, took a hard look at the nation's voting systems. Using a measure of what they called "residual votes" - overcounting, undercounting or not counting votes for any reason - researchers found that two existing voting methods had produced relatively low error rates in the last four presidential elections: old-fashioned hand-counted paper ballots and optical scan systems.

The study found that the mechanical lever system, which dominated the market in 1980 and has been in decline ever since, performed considerably worse. In overall performance, electronic voting - both the older push-button variety and the newer touch-screen units - performed scarcely better than punch cards.

"The immediate implication of our analysis is that the U.S. can lower the number of lost votes in 2004 by replacing punch cards and lever machines with optical scanning," the report said. "Touch screens are, in our opinion, still unproven."

But election officials who decided to change systems overwhelmingly went for the touch screens. Compared with about 13 percent of registered voters in 2000, this year roughly 30 percent of those registered will be asked to vote on electronic systems. Optical scan systems grew as well, although at a much slower pace: from about 30 percent of registered voters in 2000 to just under 35 percent this year, according to Election Data Services.

The Caltech/M.I.T. study said that the newest electronic systems had great potential, but were plagued by a variety of problems, like loose cables and confusing interfaces.

Change is natural, said Stephen Ansolabehere, a political science professor at M.I.T. and a member of the study team. But "optical scanning is a pretty good interim solution for the next five or 10 years,'' he said.

And then what? Litigators, start your engines: the Internet.

Professor Ansolabehere is among those who predict that myriad security obstacles will one day be overcome and votes will be cast from the nation's living rooms.

"I think it's inevitable," he said.