Will your vote COUNT?

Chads remain, machines’ integrity questioned

By Stacey Stumpf The Journal Gazette  26 September 2004

Voters across the country going to the polls Nov. 2 to the next president will determine the quality of life for Americans and the security of the world. Hoosier voters are also involved in a high-stakes match, as Republicans seek to reclaim the governor’s office in the tightest race in years.

Every vote will count. But heading into the campaign’s home stretch, some voters worry, not without reason, whether their votes will be counted.

Hoosiers have to wonder what is being done to ensure Indiana does not become the next Florida on Nov. 2. Some Indiana counties, including Adams and Kosciuskco, are still using the inherently unreliable punch cards. Nationally, new questions have arisen about the vulnerability of software used in electronic voting machines – including the machines used in Allen County.

A mass voting system failure would clearly undermine voters’ confidence in the integrity of our electoral process. Fortunately for Allen County, an experienced and bipartisan election board provides crucial oversight to ensure local elections are accurate.

Help America Vote Act

Problems four years ago spurred the $3.86 billion Help America Vote Act of 2002 – the biggest change in federal election law since President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which protected voters’ civil rights. HAVA requires local governments to meet uniform standards and increase voter access. The new law created a federal agency to serve as a clearinghouse for election information and provided funding to states to voting equipment, train poll workers and improve voter outreach initiatives.

The technology debate has monopolized public attention, but the voting act called for other changes. In Indiana, voting act money was used to voting machines, educate voters, train precinct workers, improve voter registration lists and implement provisional balloting to protect voters from disenfranchisement.

So far, the voting act has brought Indiana more than $64 million in federal funding for election administration. Indiana’s secretary of state, Todd Rokita, believes the voting act helped, but emphasizes that Indiana had already done or was planning many of the improvements required under the law. “We’ve long thought punch cards were bad,” Rokita says. “HAVA just gave us the money to pay for the things we were planning. In 2000 one-half of the voters in Indiana were using the much maligned punch card. Under 14 percent (of Indiana voters) will be using that equipment in this election.”

Indiana was way ahead of the game, but still has room to improve.

Local voting machines

Has the race to erase the election malfunctions that ran rampant in 2000 caused election officials to precipitously turn to technology as the sole solution to the problem? Government leaders need to make sure the low-tech problem of the hanging chad will not simply be replaced with the high-tech problem of corroded code. Election officials must address the potential for voting fraud so that all voters can feel confident in the election system.

Greene County (Bloomfield) is the only county in Indiana that still uses the old-fashioned lever machines. Punch card voting machines are used in 17 counties, and 31 counties use optical scan ballot cards that use computer scanners to read paper ballots completed by voters – similar to the way standardized tests are graded by school systems.

The direct record electronic, or DRE systems, are used by 49 percent of the registered voters in Indiana, including Allen County.

Allen County has used DREs manufactured by Indianapolis-based MicroVote since 1990. Pam Finlayson, executive director of the Allen County Board of Elections, is pleased with the machine and its reliability. She thinks the chances for tampering are slim because if anything goes wrong, the machine shuts down. The machines also have a cartridge record and a paper printout so an audit can be done to make sure the number of votes cast matches the number of votes counted.

Allen County performs audits after every election.

Eugene Spafford, a professor of computer science at Purdue University who specializes in computer security, is an outspoken critic of the new election technology. He thinks closer examination and more public scrutiny need to happen before voters take a leap of faith and latch onto technology as the panacea for our country’s election woes.

Software for any computer system can be rigged, and elections can easily be fixed either by unscrupulous people or by accident. Anyone who has ever had a computer crash can identify with just how easy computer glitches can happen. Spafford notes that there might be code out there that doesn’t have bugs – maybe the $100,000 per line of code that NASA uses to launch the space shuttle – but most code contains bugs.

Other voting concerns

A failure to test and certify the software that runs voting machines is another concern that computer security experts frequently mention. There is no independent testing of voting software, and federal testing standards for manufacturers are based on very old technology – some as old as 1992. Computers have changed a lot since then. And the standards were developed by politicians who may mean well but don’t understand the technology.

The simple solution is a hard copy printout verified by the voter before leaving the polling station. Allen County’s voting machines produce a paper printout, but not a voter-verified paper trail. There is no way to ensure that the voter’s intent is congruent with what the machine has recorded. The printout allows election officials to reread totals, but it does not allow them to verify that those counts directly correspond with voters’ intent.

Voting-machine manufacturers and election administrators are reluctant to use voter-verified paper trails. Manufacturers cite the difficulty of attaching printers to the machines, and some election administrators have used the flimsy excuse of expense as a reason not to protect voters’ rights.

Finlayson’s concern is that paper voting receipts could be used for coercion – by employers asking to see employee’s voting receipts, for example. Coercion would not be a concern if the receipts were reviewed by voters before leaving the polling station and then kept by the election board for audit purposes.

Finlayson is evaluating MicroVote’s new Infinity touch-screen voting machine. She should keep these concerns of vote verification and software malfunctions in mind as she and the election board decide whether this new technology will work for Allen County’s voters.

“I view the DRE machines as some of the best technology out there,” Rokita insists. “It does a good job for election administrators, it does a good job for poll workers and it does a good job for voters. A lot of this discussion is politically motivated.”

Much of the criticism about new voting technology has come from Democrats. Most of the outrages of the last presidential election disproportionately impacted Democratic candidates.

Rokita’s argument is not bolstered when many of the major election technology manufacturing companies, such as Diebold, Election Systems & Software and MicroVote, have strong ties to the Republican Party and too many instances of questionable campaign contributions have come to light.

Ohio-based Diebold executives held fund-raisers for GOP candidates, and Walden O’Dell, president and chief executive officer, prepared a fund-raising letter that pledged to “deliver” Ohio’s electoral votes. The letter is especially disconcerting considering Ohio’s heavy influence on the upcoming presidential election. Meanwhile, MicroVote’s top executive, James F. Ries Sr., has contributed money to state Rep. Katherine Richardson, who was formerly the clerk of Hamilton County and who was making the purchasing decisions on that county’s election equipment. She bought more than $1.3 million in equipment from MicroVote.

Rokita doesn’t think those contributions affect the decisions elected officials make, but voters should not have to ask the question.

With all those concerns being raised, can Allen County voters feel confident that their vote will count?

Comes down to people

Voters should be aware of the issues, but not overly concerned. Voters can feel reasonably confident that the local election will be fair and accurate, because in the end it comes down to people and the procedures they follow. “Our election board staff believes strongly that people should not be disenfranchised,” says Andy Downs, Democratic representative of the three-member election board. “And the election board has had that mindset for quite some time. People that are supposed to vote get to vote.”

Technology that is impermeable to tampering does not exist. But elections are most vulnerable if those administering the election allow it.

Allen County’s board has bipartisan representation and makes sure all election activities are conducted with equal representation from both parties. Each member of the election board is held to high standards because they have the other board members looking over their shoulders.

Another reason for confidence in local election administrators is experience. Finlayson has run Allen County’s election since 1988 and served as a member of the National Task Force on Election Reform after the 2000 election. In some communities elections are run by elected officials who may not hold the office for more than one election cycle.

Having a public employee administer the election also reduces concerns about conflicts of interest. There is no campaign fund in the way of Finlayson doing her job.

Just as with our computers at home, problems can occur, and they are usually caused by user error. Having a dedicated, knowledgeable group of people in charge of local elections helps protect Allen County voters from being victims of the injustices Florida voters suffered in the last election.

Technology can assist the process, but the responsibility for ensuring that our elections are fair and accurate rests squarely on the shoulders of the election board. Historically, the board has given residents good cause for confidence.