Electronic voting issues, problems topic of session

DARRYL NEWMAN, Los Alamos Monitor Staff Writer  21 January 2005

The necessity of being able to track errors within electronic voting machines was the topic of a presentation by a local computer scientist Thursday night at the Mesa Public Library.

Charlie Strauss, a member of Verified Voting New Mexico, presented "The Trouble with Electronic Voting" in a talk sponsored by the League of Women Voters Los Alamos.

"It's about transparency," Strauss said. "It doesn't matter whether voting machines make accidents, but what we want is to make machines that are error evident."

Strauss called for the requirement of a voter verified paper audit trail, the removal of secret software used in elections and mandatory random recounts of election results.

In addition, he said there is a need and laws that specify that in the event of a dispute, the paper ballot has primacy unless there is reason to doubt otherwise.

"Just as we have open meetings in government, we need to have open software," Strauss said and criticized the fact that the internal operations within most voting machines are secretive.

Problems in the 2004 general election in New Mexico revealed that voters in Cibola County were unable to make their votes register on touch screens, and in Sandoval County, low voltage conditions were responsible for miscalibrating the voting machines, Strauss said.

"One clerk blamed the problems on voter incompetence, which was not the case," he said. "There is no proof that a machine is accurate without a voter verified audit trail."

Los Alamos County utilizes optical scanning voting machines in all of its elections, a method that has received praise by some in the community.

"The optical scanning machines are good because they allow for a paper trail, get a lot of testing and are used by several others, including the schools," said Rebecca Shankland, a member of the League of Women Voters.

In contrast, "touch screen voting," a method that Strauss said contains several software bugs, resulted in several flaws because of its poor design and the rush of several companies to make the machines available on the market.

Strauss said electronic voting is at odds with trustable government, partly because fraud is not highly detectable.

Strauss encouraged the League of Women Voters and other active organizations in the area to press Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron as well as Denise Lamb, state elections director, to lobby the legislature in approving a paper trail when elections are held.

Strauss said that because Lamb is head of the National Association of State Election Directors and Vigil-Giron presides over the National Association of Secretaries of State, New Mexico has a strong voice in regard to voting machine reform.

Attendees of the lecture had the opportunity to pose questions and interact with Strauss during and after the presentation.

After the talk, newly elected County Clerk Mary Pat Kraemer said she is hopeful that electronic voting machines will be improved over time.

"We all want machines that will rekindle the confidence of voters in the election process," she said. "In Los Alamos we are looking at what we can do that meets the federal requirements and maintains voter confidence at the same time."

Barbara Calef, president of the League of Women Voters, said after the presentation that the league is interested in all aspects of voting.

"We're concerned with securing the best possible (voting) system for the county, state and country," she said.

Verified Voting New Mexico is a coalition of citizens and organizations that urges state election officials to halt the use of electronic voting machines that do not provide a voter-verified paper trail.

For more information, visit the website at vvnm.org. The National Association of State Election Directors can be found online at nased.org. The National Association of Secretaries of State is located online at nass.org.