Mulroy: Paper trail from voting booth is a necessity

By Steven J. Mulroy   Commercial Appeal   October 6, 2005

Bio info: Steven J. Mulroy is an assistant professor of law at the University of Memphis and a former voting rights litigator for the U.S. Justice Department.

Welcome to the brave new world of voting machine technology, where the same type of touch-screen technology you use at your ATM helps record your choices in the voting booth, with the votes automatically tabulated by computer. But while we reap computer-age benefits at the polls, we might want to hold on to one old-fashioned backup system: paper records.  
We're about to spend millions of dollars in Shelby County to buy a new generation of voting machines about 1,500 of them for use in the almost 300 voting precincts in the county. The purchases are necessary to meet federal and state requirements. Of more immediate concern, the 20-year-old Shouptronic voting machines now in use cannot handle the large ballot for the August 2006 county election, which includes judicial positions that open up every eight years.

The Shelby County Election Commission will decide by the end of the year what kind of machines to buy. Because of the requirements noted above, they almost certainly will be state-of-the-art direct-recording electronic (DRE) machines with touch-screen technology.

But the DRE machines have one problem: If they are hacked, tampered with by election officials or voting machine personnel, or just plain malfunction, there's no way to tell for sure whether the vote totals they spit out accurately reflect what the voters put in. And neither the DRE machines' advertised electronic "audit" function nor the paper record some models produce reliably solves that problem; those functions just reflect the results from the machine's computer, without regard to whether they match votes cast or result from tampering or malfunction.

That's why experts across the country, and advocates such as the Democracy Project, a coalition of local citizens' groups, are pushing for machines that use a "voter-verified paper audit trail" (VVPAT). With VVPAT, voters are shown a paper record of their vote choices before they finish casting their ballots; if this accurately reflects their intentions, they approve it and cast their vote. The physical record is stored in the machine and can be used in case a recount becomes necessary.

VVPAT is a technology that enjoys wide support across party lines. The national commission on election reform led by Jimmy Carter and James Baker has endorsed it, and Congress is considering making VVPAT a condition for local governments' receipt of federal election assistance funds.

Ten states already require VVPATs for all new voting machines, and similar laws are being considered by dozens of others, including Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas.

VVPAT has its critics, including some (but by no means all) election officials in Shelby County and in Nashville. The main criticism comes from those who question whether VVPAT is necessary. But studies by such authorities as Cal Tech/MIT, the Congressional Research Service, and the California Secretary of State's Office have concluded that DREs are vulnerable to hacking and tampering, and that without VVPATs there is no way to know that each vote is counted properly.

VVPAT is also criticized as being expensive and hard to administer because of all the paper that's required. But affordable VVPAT elections have been held in Nevada without any problems, and the other states that have adopted the technology have concluded it is manageable. The companies that manufacture these machines have the technical expertise to make them work properly.

The most significant issue with VVPAT is that it could theoretically threaten voter confidentiality, if each machine contains a sequential record of votes that corrupt election officials could match with voter sign-in sheets to determine how an individual voted.

But many affordable VVPAT models exist with technical features that prevent such abuse. At any rate, that kind of abuse would be more likely to occur in rural counties with one or two voting machines per precinct; it would not be as significant a concern in Shelby County precincts that have multiple machines.

The bottom line is that without VVPAT, an increasingly cynical and alienated public simply will not trust the accuracy of election results, particularly in close elections. Just consider the dispute over last month's state Senate race in Shelby County between Ophelia Ford and Terry Roland or the controversies in Ohio and Florida last November to get a taste of the public's credibility gap. VVPAT would not only ensure accuracy and reliability in our voting system; it also would bolster public confidence in the system.

The county Election Commission should buy machines that are either VVPAT-equipped or can have VVPAT features added later say, in time for the 2008 elections.

And since state certification of a VVPAT-equipped machine is required before a county can use such a machine, the Tennessee Election Commission should facilitate timely certification of VVPAT-type machines. It should not stand in the way of Shelby County's decision to move forward with this reform.

A purchase of this magnitude gives us a once-in-a-generation opportunity to ensure reliability and trustworthiness in our elections. If we don't take advantage of it, we may sacrifice voter confidence in our elections for years to come.