A Vote Of No Confidence For New Election Equipment
February 16, 2005

Michelle Jacklin  Hartford Courant

This is getting more confusing by the day.

Connecticut's top elections official, Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, says a 2002 federal law, co-authored by U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd, won't allow the state to buy the most trustworthy voting technology available.

That's news to Dodd, who coincidentally happened to be at the state Capitol Monday. Dodd told reporters that the law, known as the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, does allow for fail-safe voting technology.

But, Dodd said, "It's left to others as to how to make it happen." Presumably, those "others" include elections officials such as Bysiewicz.

Meanwhile, a group of Yale University experts say Bysiewicz is courting disaster if she goes ahead and opens bid proposals next Wednesday for 771 new voting machines, one for each precinct in the state. The Yale contingent says the state's Request For Proposal is flawed and could result in Connecticut spending as much as $5 million on voting machines that can't guarantee the integrity of the balloting process.

Three members of the group - computer science professor Michael J. Fischer; Eddan E. Katz, executive director of The Information Society Project; and Christina Spiesel, senior research scholar at the Yale Law School - say they tried to bring the RFP's shortcomings to the attention of Bysiewicz in October but that their letter was ignored.

"Connecticut is poised to do it the incorrect way," said Fischer. "But if you raise alarms, you're called paranoid."

Connecticut is plowing ahead in its attempt to meet HAVA's deadlines irrespective of those red flags. Someone, either Gov. M. Jodi Rell or legislative leaders, needs to put the brakes on. When the best and the brightest offer their knowledge and expertise, why not listen?

Congress approved HAVA in the wake of the 2000 presidential election calamity in Florida. The law requires states to upgrade their voting technology to conform with federal standards. In Connecticut's case, it means ultimately replacing thousands of antiquated lever machines that have proved reliable, but are no longer manufactured.

Central to the overhaul of the nation's voting system is this universal requirement: Whatever technology is adopted, it must ensure that every American's vote is accurately counted, including the 20 million disabled voters. In terms of accomplishing that goal, Bysiewicz says HAVA requires a paper audit trail, though not necessarily one verified by each voter. As for the disabled, she says a technology hasn't been developed that allows the disabled to verify their votes.

The Yale experts say she's wrong. Optical scanning devices can be adapted so that the disabled can indeed verify their votes. Also, there's no reason to believe that Direct Recording Electronic voting systems, often described as ATM-style machines, couldn't be similarly adapted.

But therein lies the rub. The RFP issued by Bysiewicz's office doesn't list optical scanning devices as an option; it specifically calls for DRE voting systems.

What's more, there's no requirement in the RFP for a voter-verified paper ballot.

In other words, Connecticut is only seeking bids on ATM-style machines - which are, in essence, personal computers - with no way to independently verify the voter's intent.

"The assumption is that the machine is somehow perfect," says Katz. In fact, the DRE systems are just as prone to worms, viruses, disc errors, power outages and corrupted programming codes as PCs.

"Computer science has not advanced to the point where we can make sure a machine behaves according to specification," says Fischer.

In addition, the paper audit printed out at the end of the day is no more reliable than the machine itself. The audit merely replicates what's stored inside the computer, which could include data that have already been corrupted, whether for benign or nefarious reasons.

There's only one sure-fire way to guarantee that the final tally accurately reflects voter intent, and that's to allow each and every voter, including the disabled, to verify his ballot. The receipt could be set aside and counted later. Without that fail-safe backup, Connecticut's newfangled voting machines won't be any more reliable than punch cards and hanging chads.

Bysiewicz should scrap the RFP before Connecticut is stuck with 771 pieces of expensive junk.