Moore: What's wrong with voting machines?
By Murvale Moore/ CNC COlumnist    July 28, 2005

Under a heading, "What's At Stake - Ensure all votes are counted," an activist group urged me to call my federal representative to support the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act (HR. 550), a bill designed to restore confidence in the outcomes of elections.

     Unfortunately, I am convinced that this bill is a placebo rather than a cure for voting machine fraud. Please let me explain why, and suggest that we already have a slightly simpler method which supports simple, verifiable recounts.

     Let me quote from the mailing I received. "A growing list of renowned computer scientists considers a voter-verified paper trail to be a critical safeguard for the accuracy, integrity and security of computer assisted elections." Properly done, I concur. However, since there is no assurance that a computer generated record of the vote entered coincides with how it was entered into the total, it must be reviewed and certified as accurate by the voter. Moreover, it may only be useful in case of a manual recount.

     I don't understand the effort which has been "wasted" on the controversial search for a readily verifiable voting machine. It seems to me that the machines used in Lincoln voting leave little to be desired.

     They put voter prepared paper ballots through an optical scanner to obtain the vote totals. The paper ballots provide a valid record of the voting process should there be any doubt about the accuracy of the count, whether due to machine malfunction or deliberate fraud. The ballots may be either hand counted, or be run through a scanner whose accuracy has been validated by counting a "standardized" set of ballots with it to insure that it gives the known count.

     Can anyone tell me why we are devoting so much time and money to finding a new solution to concerns over dependable vote counts? Don't we simply need to standardize on optical scanners for paper ballots? Perhaps, we should also make it standard procedure to verify the accuracy of the counting process by counting a known set of ballots either just before or just after counting the voter's ballots.