For Voting Machines We Can Trust (4 Letters)

Letters to the Editor   New York Times  Published: March 14, 2005 
 To the Editor:

Re "Virtues of Optical-Scan Voting" (editorial, March 9):

You are right to suggest that the heavily lobbied touch-screen voting machines now under consideration by the New York Legislature should not be used at all.

Optical-scan voting is far cheaper, faster in the polling place and produces the best kind of paper trail, a ballot marked by the voter.

While optical-scan voting is superior, there must be safeguards. Initial scanning should be done on the precinct level to minimize error before results are sent to the local board of elections. Results should then be tabulated county by county and transmitted to the final tabulating location.

There should not be a central, politically motivated state bureaucracy in charge of the process. Vote counting should be from the bottom up.

Paper ballots, after they have been scanned, should be guarded like gold in Fort Knox. A security system must be in place that will prevent the lifeblood of a democracy from being lost, strayed or stolen.

Bill Blanck
Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., March 9, 2005
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To the Editor:

A recent Caltech-M.I.T. study clearly shows that touch-screens are the most accurate and efficient method of voting. The study recognizes Georgia, which uses touch-screens across the state, as making the greatest improvement in voting accuracy throughout the country.

Regarding the cost advantages of optical-scan machines, you do not mention the long-term costs related to printing ballots that are inevitably passed on to taxpayers. These costs, particularly in large cities that require many ballots in several languages, are one of the primary reasons most election officials prefer touch-screens to optical scanners.

Additionally, optical-scan machines are not "far cheaper than touch-screens." Per unit, the cost of optical scanners is about $1,000 more than a typical touch-screen machine.

If the bills in the New York Legislature are more focused on touch-screen voting as opposed to optical-scan technology, it's because forward-thinking legislators are acutely aware of the advantages of touch-screen voting.

Thomas W. Swidarski
President, Diebold Election Systems
McKinney, Tex., March 10, 2005
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To the Editor:

You urge New York legislators to favor optical scanners because they are "the best voting technology now available." They aren't.

Despite the fact that the voter personally marks the ballot and has the chance to verify his or her choices, no machine has ever been built that can read a ballot the way a human eye does, and there is no assurance that the machine will count the ballot the way it was marked by the voter.

Even if a manual recount is performed flawlessly (an impossibility considering the charged atmosphere under which such recounts occur), the mark made by a voter may not be counted because the states have developed different and obscure criteria for what constitutes a valid optical vote.

The fundamental problem is that a ballot offers only a finite number of candidate choices, but an optical-scan ballot can be marked by a voter in an infinite number of ways.

There is no consistent method of determining voter intent from an optical ballot, so some voters will necessarily be disenfranchised through their use.

Electronic machines do not suffer from this defect. They offer a finite number of yes-no choices, so there is no possibility of mistaking voter intent.

Michael I. Shamos
Pittsburgh, March 9, 2005
The writer, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, is a consultant to the secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on electronic voting.
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To the Editor:

We use optical-scan ballots throughout Minnesota. We don't have long waits at the polls, and recounts are easier than with other systems.

Optical-scan ballots are certainly better than electronic voting machines.

Eric Jaffa
Brooklyn Center, Minn.
March 9, 2005