Why E-Voting Still Is Not E-nough
By Jill S. Farrell
CNSNews.com Commentary
October 08, 2004

The Free Congress Foundation is an educational foundation with conservative roots and an extensive history of encouraging citizens to become effectively involved in the political process. Although we are generally in favor of voter-verifiable, paper-ballot systems, we see this issue as one of voter confidence.

One way to build voter confidence is to allow voters to witness tangible evidence that the vote that they cast accurately reflects their intention. Other important steps to voter confidence include preventing or overcoming security and malfunction problems. The surest way to accomplish those goals is through heightened security procedures at all stages of the election. No matter what voting machine system is chosen, carefully thought-out procedures are paramount.

If securing accurate results is the goal of every election official, the audit process that verifies election results needs to start with a legitimate paper trail of voter intent. As in Nevada, with their touch-less voter-verifiable ballot, guarding the custody of these ballots runs a close second in the audit process. Precinct-level results should be posted for at least 30 days and recorded for later comparison to central tabulation results (to insure against tampering either location). Ballot-less DREs simply cannot offer these important safeguards.

I have read dozens of anecdotal accounts of "accidents" and "glitches," which have been promptly followed by claims of foolproof "fixes" e.g., memory loss due to low battery, memory overload, key over-sensitivity, software compatibility flaws, keycard malfunctions, physical security of machines and their components. It defies logic that such a simple safeguard (and handy audit tool) as a paper ballot would be so firmly rejected by proponents of ballot-less systems.

Parallel monitoring, a system by which machines are randomly tested by entering known data and testing the accuracy of the machine results, can spot tampering or an error in a voting machine if the machine ed for monitoring has defective software on it but this is certainly no panacea.

For instance, the RABA Technologies, LLC, a firm hired by Maryland to test its ballot-less system, found that the same electronic "key" code unlocked each voting machine in a precinct. It was easy to reproduce the key. Even if the key weren't reproduced, the locks could be picked frightfully quickly.

It takes very few, possibly only two, machines' worth of votes to change the outcome of even a national election. (The Florida donnybrook in 2000 occurred over less than 600 votes.) Parallel monitoring, testing and certification won't catch a "picked" lock. To counteract that type of tampering, a voter-verified paper ballot is essential. Maryland officials claim to have addressed these issues.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers reports, "Physically securing a system's hardware and software was also a problem in Fairfax County, Virginia, where 1 percent of the county's new WINvote touch-screen machines, made by Advanced Voting Solutions Inc., of Frisco, Texas, had serious malfunctions. Some of the machines were repaired outside the polling place and then returned to the precincts and put back in use, despite the fact that security seals had been broken or removed-in apparent violation of state law. "

The story continues: \ldblquote...about half of the vote totals couldn't be electronically transmitted to the county headquarters because the system flooded itself with messages, in effect creating its own denial-of-service attack on the server. One election for the school board was particularly flawed.

A still unexplained anomaly in a number of machines apparently subtracted votes at random from Republican school board candidate Rita S. Thompson, resulting in a possible miscount of 1 percent or 2 percent of her votes-close to the margin by which she lost the election."

Presumably those machines underwent pre-election logic and accuracy testing. Post-election testing found the culprit machines. Had there been a voter-verified paper ballot, the error would have been spotted almost immediately and that machine could have been taken out of use. The votes recorded prior to the malfunction would still be valid, because voters could check and verify their paper ballot, which could be evidence of voter intent.

In economics there is "no such thing as a free lunch." In voting there is no such thing as a "re-vote." Elections can usually legally be held only once. In the Virginia case it could not be proved which votes were switched and which were legitimate, so the existing flawed results were certified anyway.

Parallel monitoring is good as far as revealing a problem, but there are many problems it won't fix, whereas a voter-verified paper ballot can eliminate the need to do parallel monitoring. Ballots can reveal and resolve problems.

Military folks might call paper ballots part of the 7 "P"s: proper prior planning prevents p__-poor performance.

Redundancy is not the answer. Ballot-less machines can be redundant and more redundant. It won't make a bit of difference if the original votes were not recorded accurately.

As for lever machines, no one can say that they aren't a problem, but election officials generally have the ability to open a machine and see if it is working accurately. Scientists from Los Alamos and MIT usually are not required.

Studies show that in a properly supervised election hand-counted paper ballots really are the most accurate. Paper ballots don't fail to boot up. They have no inherent programming. Security must be provided for ballots at each step of the way.

One has to employ nearly identical procedures for electronic voting, too but voting machines have inherent programming, and are inherently insecure because it is impossible for a voter or an election official to determine unless there is an actual ballot whether or not the programming has been tampered with. Computers can and have failed to boot up (and that can cause disenfranchisement of voters if no paper backup is available).

While critics of the ballot-less system do not claim that programming fraud is rampant, fraud is possible, even likely given the history of voting fraud. Voter-verifiable ballots act as deterrent to fraud, give an added level of audit security, and enhance voter confidence.