Make sure voters can count on system
Opinion   Indianapolis Star December 20, 2004
 
Our position is: Americans need assurance that when they go to the polls, their votes will count.

The Ohio Supreme Court's chief justice threw out a challenge to the state's presidential election results last week. Ohio's delegation to the Electoral College already has cast its support for George W. Bush, who carried the state by 119,000 votes. So the ongoing recount in Ohio, requested by two minor party candidates, is in many ways pointless.

Yet an autopsy of the election process in Ohio and throughout the nation is still very much needed. It's not a question of changing outcomes. The fact that Bush won by a safe margin can't be seriously questioned.

But the nation's system for casting votes which led to unconscionably long lines in Ohio and other states, inaccurate voter registration rolls, inadequate poll-worker training and claims of tampering still needs to be dramatically improved. Too many problems with computerized voting machines, especially punch-card and touch-screen systems, remain. Too many companies providing hardware and software for elections have ties to one party or the other. And too few computerized voting systems provide any paper trail.

In many respects, the 2004 election was remarkably efficient, given the large turnout. Yet the system's many problems linger, and they must be fixed before voters head to the polls again.