2 in House say machine votes need receipts

BY MICHAEL R. WICKLINE

Arkansas Decmocrat Gazette  January 16, 2005

Two months after barely winning election, state Rep. Ray Kidd, D-Jonesboro, says he intends to introduce legislation to require touch-screen voting machines to produce a paper receipt for voters to verify their votes and to use in recounts.

Kidd said the receipts would be placed in a box at the polling site so they?d be available in the event of a recount, and voters would be precluded from taking away their receipts.

He?s working on details for the proposed bill with Rep. Denny Sumpter, D-West Memphis, chairman of the House State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee. "Denny and I are concerned that we have a paper trail, so if we have a machine failure of some sort or there is some question and we need a recount, that we have a paper trail," said Kidd, who defeated Republican Byron Holt of Brookland by 16 votes in the Nov. 2 election. "We are talking about a cashregister-type paper that would record the vote and have a paper trail. We would like the voter to have a chance to look at the vote and change the vote," he said.

Kidd said the legislation will be introduced in the next month or so, and it?ll be designed to restore voters? confidence in elections. "The general public as a whole is mad and p ***** off and fed up with our elections. They are losing faith," he said in an interview last week at the state Capitol.

This proposed legislation in the 85 th General Assembly could influence what type of voting machines Arkansans use in the next several years.

Alaska, California, Ohio, Nevada and Wisconsin have mandates for touch-screen voting machines to produce paper receipts, said Jennie Bowser of the National Conference of State Legislatures. Nevada?s mandate was the only one in effect for last year?s election, she said.

Legislation requiring these machines to produce paper receipts failed in 15 states last year, she said.

In Arkansas, Secretary of State Charlie Daniels has said he wants to give each of the 75 counties the option of using only touch-screen voting machines or optical-scan voting machines with one touchscreen machine per polling site by the May 23, 2006, primary election, to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act.

On a touch-screen machine, people vote by touching an electronic screen. On an optical-scan machine, voters mark a paper ballot that?s later placed into an optical-scan unit that reads the marks and tabulates the votes.

The state has $17.8 million in federal funds and $712,000 in state funds to purchase new voting machines to comply with the federal law, according to the secretary of state?s office.

Purchasing only touchscreen machines for polling sites in each county could cost roughly $21 million, and buying optical-scan voting machines with one touch-screen machine per polling site could cost roughly $26 million, although officials in the secretary of state?s office said they hope to get a better deal than that.

Sumpter said the proposed legislation, if enacted, could have an effective date that is after Daniels? initial purchase of voting machines for counties. "I am not worried about one [touch-screen] machine at each polling site. What I am worried about is when we eventually get to a complete DRE [direct recording electronic] voting system and then you really open yourself up to some voter confidence issues," he said.

Touch-screen machines are the most common type of direct recording electronic machine.

Sumpter acknowledges that requiring these touch-screen machines to produce paper receipts will cause administrative problems for election officials.

He said that?s why he and Kidd are trying to work with the secretary of state?s office on the proposed legislation.

Janet Miller, deputy secretary of state for elections and communications, said Daniels wants to see the details of the proposed legislation before taking a position on it. "From purely an election administration standpoint, there are problems associated with the voter-verified paper audit trail," she said. "However, from the voters ? standpoint, we are sympathetic to concerns that the folks have of being able to verify the accuracy of their vote and make sure their vote is counted," Miller said.

Miller said adding an attachable printer to these voting machines to produce "a voter-verified paper trail" could lead to paper jams, and she worries about the potential violation of ballot secrecy with these receipts.

Blind voters wouldn?t be able to review these receipts, although the intent of the Help America Vote Act is to allow the blind to be able to vote independently and secretly just like other voters, she said.

Lisa Burks of Conway, national coordinator for the National Coalition for Verified Voting, said these machines are going to break down no matter whether they produce a paper ballot or not.

Voters often lose the secrecy of their ballots when they ask poll workers for help in voting on the touch-screen machines, and blind voters could vote by audio under federal election law, said Burks, who waged an unsuccessful challenge to U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Little Rock in the Democratic primary last year.

Miller said voting equipment manufacturers estimate that purchasing touch-screen machines that produce paper receipts would cost $200 to $400 per machine beyond the initial cost of $3,000 to $3,500 per machine. "What we certainly don?t want to do is to force an extra financial burden on the counties because we need to be able to help them comply with HAVA [Help America Vote Act] as much as is possible with state and federal money," she said.

Burks said the touch-screen voting machines already are expensive. "Having the paper ballot [with these machines] is worth any amount of money to make sure the vote is counted because that is the bedrock of our democracy and the Voting Rights Act," she said.

Miller said she hopes the secretary of state?s office is in a position in late March or early April to request proposals from voting equipment manufacturers to provide voting equipment that complies with the federal Help America Vote Act.

That would give the state about a year to make sure each county has compatible equipment by the 2006 primary election, she said. "If paper is the ed or preferred method of voting, maybe a statewide optical-scan solution is the best choice," Miller said.

Susan Inman, elections director for the Pulaski County Election Commission, said the state?s largest county has used touch-screen machines that don?t produce paper receipts in early voting since 2000. "It is a matter of trusting the technology or not trusting the technology. If you want paper ballots, just have paper ballots," she said.