Summit plans future of voting
Wednesday 03 August   
Secretaries of State grapple with legacy of controversial elections

by Burt Berlowe   Pulse of the Twin Cities

Just a stone?s throw from where the Mississippi River travels through the middle of St. Paul, many of America?s top election officials recently embarked on their own historic journey through unchartered waters. As it launched its second century of existence the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) sailed straight into the headwind of election reform.

The NASS gathering at the Radisson Riverfront Hotel in St Paul two weekends ago culminated an historic weekend of events examining our electoral system and how to improve it. While little specific action was taken, there was a ballot box full of challenges, ideas and proposals that could impact American elections for years to come.

Some of the most promising innovations appeared in the displays of voting machine manufacturers that filled the atrium entry to the convention. It buzzed with eager salespeople showing election officials new technology that promises to address concerns about the integrity of recent elections: poll books where voters can sign in electronically and that automatically detects errors, transfers voter history to a data registration system and gives directions to polling places; a digital recording device attached to touch screen machines that records every aspect of an election and replays it back for voter verification; along with numerous versions of optional verified paper trail equipment. For controversial companies like Sequoia, Accucenture and Diebold, who have been challenged the past two elections, it was an opportunity to prove that they have answered their critics. It was an impressive display that seemed to hold the potential of fairer, more accurate elections.

The first conference session after Saturday morning breakfast linked the NASS conference with the previous day?s public hearing on the Voting Rights act held in downtown Minneapolis. Jon Greenbaum of the Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights, a sponsor of the hearing, described a history of the Act, aspects of it that are up for renewal and their impact on elections and elected officials.

In an interview following the speech, Greenbaum talked about the public hearing ?The most interesting testimony came from witnesses to incidents of discrimination at the polis against Native Americans in Duluth during the ?04 election,? he recalled. ?They were harassed by Republican poll watchers as they came to vote. Even the election officers were intimidated by it. I was totally shocked by the testimony.?

?These kind of stories haven?t been in the news,? he said. ?They are a real problem in states with large Native-American populations. And his could certainly happen again in coming elections.?

Greenbaum added that such harassment violates the minority language provision of the Voting Rights Act but that different polling places around the country have varying policies on the enforcement of those provisions. Minnesota is one of the states that doesn?t meet the threshold for enforcement of that provision which requires racial minorities to make up at least five percent of the state?s population. NASS would later pass a motion supporting extension the language provision and other aspects of the Voting Rights Act.

A highlight of the afternoon session of the conference was an address by Ralph Munro, a former Washington Secretary of State and a member of the Carter-Baker Commission, (headed by Former President Jimmy Carter and onetime Secretary of State Howard Baker), which has been meeting to discuss a broad range of election reform issues, including such innovations as national voter registration, the establishment of voting centers and an election day holiday, possible abolition of the electoral college and instant runoff voting. The main focus was on the use of international observers at American presidential elections, which also drew an NASS endorsement.

On the way out of this session, I met up with Debra Markowitz, NASS treasurer and Vermont?s secretary of state. She honed in on a major focal point of the conference.

?The main concern of the secretaries of states is HAVA,? she said, referring to the Help America Vote Act, passed by Congress in response to problems raised in the 2000 election. ?We need to understand it better. It hasn?t been fully funded yet and there is inconsistency in its enforcement in different areas, especially voter accessibility.?

An entire session of the conference was devoted to an examination of HAVA, its successes and shortcomings. But, in the end, further action was left in the hands of individual states.

The issue of state versus local control is a reccurring one for the visiting secretaries of state. NASS approved a resolution recently opposing national standards for elections because they wanted to maintain individual state autonomy. The most controversial provision of HAVA is its requirement that states have voter verified paper trails on their voting machines. Questions about the accuracy of voting machines and ballot counting in ?04 prompted calls for paper receipts that could be used to confirm each vote in states that don?t already have such a system.

There was a rumor floating around the convention that NASS would discuss and possibly vote on the paper trail issue, but it was quickly squelched by Mary Kiffmeyer, Minnesota?s secretary of state and outgoing NASS president. ?I don?t believe that there will be a resolution on the paper trail issue at this convention,? she said, adding that NASS is interested in having states keep the right to make that decision, not the feds ? a response that seemed to be in conflict with HAVA. No formal action on paper trails was taken at the convention.

The issue of verified paper trails is also high on the agenda of several national election reform groups who attended the NASS conclave, including Vote Trust USA, Common Cause, and Minnesota?s own Citizens for Election Integrity. Vote Trust USA, a grassroots coalition that originated in California and now functions via a virtual office and internet communication, is one of the organizations pushing hardest for Congress to pass legislation mandating voting machine paper trails nationwide.

?We want to clarify and upgrade voting systems to assure that every vote is counted accurately and that there are voter verified paper trails,? Vote Trust executive director Joan Krawitz told me in a hurried interview between convention sessions. ?We also need a manual random audit of voting records.?

Krawitz has been a poll worker and participated in the ?04 election recount in Ohio, where she found many discrepancies in the state?s election system. ?The recount was not done according to Ohio state law,? she explains. ?We are educating and training people about the voting process. Our slogan is ?trust, but verify.??

Common Cause, which has a long and storied history of citizens? advocacy, is also actively promoting voter verified paper ballots, as well as improved voter identification procedures, especially for the elderly and immigrant populations, according to Barbara Burt, who represented that organization at the NASS gathering. ?We want all votes to be accessible, accurate and accountable,? she said.

Doubts about the outcome of the last presidential election stemmed in large part from unusual discrepancies in exit polling. Surveys taken of people leaving the polls in Ohio showed Senator John Kerry winning the state by several percentage points?the opposite of the final result?according to some experts a statistical impossibility. The pollster?Edison-Mitofsky blamed the discrepancy on the assumption that fewer Bush voters responded to the polling.

Utah resident Kathy Dopp runs a fledgling organization called the Election Archive, which has employed a bevy of professional statisticians to study the Ohio exit poll. They argue against Mitofsky?s logic and claim that the poll results were probably accurate. Dopp attended the NASS conference to spread the word about her organization and maybe even recruit some additional staff or volunteers. During an interview in her hotel room she explained her mission.

?We are creating a data base of our findings which will be released to election officials and the general public,? she said. ?Secretaries of State should have detailed data on exit polling to ensure accuracy at upcoming elections. The best solution may have to be to eliminate exit polling altogether.?

By mid-afternoon on Monday, the voting machine distributors had packed up their displays and the delegates were filtering out of the hotel en route to a reception at Governor Tim Pawlenty?s mansion, the last of a whirl of social events provided for attendees, largely through the courtesy of the voting machine companies.

As they headed back to their respective states, the secretaries and the visiting reformers would each need to decide how to ride the headwind. They had taken official action in only three areas: voting to endorse the extension of the Voting Rights Act and international observers at elections, and to continue to work on the remaining challenges of HAVA In coming months, there would chances to support a paper trail bill sponsored by Congressman Rush Holt, and/or eventually bring it to a vote by NASS, to work out kinks in election management and sharing of experiences and resources ? and, to decide what to do about the voting machines that make or break so many elections.

In a moment, the atrium seemed empty of people, except for a few of the election reform activists who were exchanging words of farewell. Then I noticed that three men were standing alone in the center of the floor carrying on casual banter. Two of them it turned out were Indian immigrants Pradeep Saxena and Raji Inengar who represented an organization called the Human Rights Advancement Institute. Their main mission through several previous elections has been to analyze voting technology and then report their findings to appropriate officials. As the remaining election reform activists gathered around them, the two men offered a shocking climax to an upbeat and promising event.

The machines don?t work,? Saxena said, explaining the results of his research on current voting systems. ?How many of them?? I ask. ?None of them,? he replied, then described in stunning detail the fallacies of the various machines that belie their claims of airtight security and accuracy. ?None of them are tamper-proof. They can all be hacked. The companies don?t have technicians who really know this equipment.?

Someone asked Saxena and Inengar how long it will be before we have a foolproof voting technology system. They stared at each other than chimed in together; ?At least five more elections.? As I left the hotel a few minutes later, the sun had gone down and a hard rain was beginning to fall. ||