Verify voting results

Bills would help restore confidence in N.C. elections

Opinion   Charlotte Observer   30 March 2005

N.C. legislative leaders have done a good job tackling two of the thorniest problems stemming from last fall's general election. Both the House and Senate adopted bills that clarified the legislature's 2003 decision to allow qualified, properly registered voters to cast ballots out of their home precincts on Election Day. And lawmakers set up a formal process to hear contested statewide elections. Those laws will help assure that votes of North Carolinians will be counted and election disputes will be resolved.

Good. Now lawmakers must turn to the recommendations of a bipartisan committee dealing with more technical issues. The Joint Select Committee on Electronic Voting, chaired by Republican Sen. Austin Allran of Catawba County and Democratic Sen. Ellie Kinnaird and Rep. Verla Insko of Orange County, held hearings to explore voting problems last fall. News accounts showed that thousands of votes had been lost in improperly programmed machines, other votes had been misplaced and questions about voting abounded.

The committee's common-sense recommendations will help restore public confidence in elections and provide a way to verify voting results when questions arise later. One key measure is pending in both the House Elections Committee and a Senate judiciary committee. It would strengthen the State Board of Elections' ability to provide proper oversight of elections. It would empower the board to certify up to four vendors of electronic voting devices that could be used in N.C. elections, allowing election officials to develop expertise in a few systems rather than requiring them to be familiar with a longer list of systems. It would give the board sufficient staff and resources to train poll workers and provide experts to resolve technical problems.

Perhaps most important, the bill requires that a paper ballot backup be kept for all election devices giving state and local officials a way to audit voting and verify results after elections. It also imposes certain security measures to protect against tampering with voting machine software. And it requires that the cost of any changes be paid for by the state, not local governments.

Several other bills deal with voting issues. One allows the State Board of Elections to establish a process allowing known voters whose ballots were lost during the election to cast a replacement ballot. Another would allow government employees to help staff polling places without having to take a day's vacation.

The joint committee considered one other good idea that would make voting easier and perhaps expand voter participation. It would allow early one-stop voting sites to remain open all the way through Election Day rather than closing several days before elections. Allowing voters to use one-stop voting sites through Election Day makes good sense.

The recommendations pending in the legislature have broad support from Republicans and Democrats. While no one argues they would cure every problem with the state's election process, they directly address the worst problems N.C. voters encountered in the 2004 election. They deserve full consideration and an aye vote.