No way to follow a paper trail
Given current circumstances, would McDonnell and Deeds have crafted a better election law?

The Roanoke Times   Editorial    01 December 2005

When casting votes to revamp the election law, the thought wouldn't have occurred to either lawmaker, Bob McDonnell or Creigh Deeds, that they would one day be locked in the tightest statewide contest in modern-day Virginia. If it had, would they have provided more safeguards to ensure that every vote counts?

It is too late to ask for a do-over to decide the outcome of the attorney general's contest, where McDonnell holds a minuscule lead of 323 out of nearly 2 million votes cast. The candidates will need to trust the recount process that is basically a mathematical exercise that double-checks the numbers taken from every voting machine in every precinct across the commonwealth.

The process is tedious and necessary. When all is said and done, the integrity of the math will go unquestioned, yet the integrity of the system could remain in doubt, as no way exists to verify that votes cast on new electronic machines reflect voters' intent.

Although no allegations of tampering have surfaced, some Roanoke voters complained on Election Day that they encountered difficulties with the touch screens. The machines offered several prompts to check voters' intent, but they are not capable of printing receipts. Without an auditable paper trail, the process is flawed, as was documented in a recent report by the Commission on Federal Election Reform that suggests ways to restore credibility to the voting system.

Virginia was trying to do just that in the wake of the 2000 Florida election debacle by devising steps for a statewide recount. But Virginia stopped short of requiring paper trails. The commonwealth simply trusts the word of its vendors that the voting software is tamper-proof.

For now, McDonnell and Deeds are locked into the rules they created. Regardless of which man wins, Virginia should revisit its election laws and adopt provisions similar to North Carolina's, requiring paper trails and programmers' codes so that random audits can verify accuracy.

It isn't perfect, but it is two steps better than what Virginia has now.