Get It On Paper: Electronic voting machines need backup
December 6, 2006
It's encouraging that the incoming Congress doesn't want to stop there and will push for paper verification. And measures have been introduced for consideration by the 2007 Texas Legislature; they would require the state to use paper trails.
Written by Editorial, Dallas Morning News
Widespread use of electronic voting machines has boosted elections into the realm of greater speed, confidence and reliability. Usually.
It's those scattered episodes of glitches and high suspicion that tell us the job of securing the vote is far from over.
Like any electronic or mechanical device, voting machines get bollixed up. What office worker hasn't called the IT department in panic over a frozen computer? How many of us have dealt with flawed software that needs patching?
The simple problem is that balky voting machines store critical information that they can't or won't disgorge.
Case in point is last month's election in Florida (where else?) to succeed (who else?) Rep. Katherine Harris, of hanging-chad fame. The vote in one county showed an unlikely undercount of 18,000 in a race decided by 369 votes. The ensuing recount won't dissipate simmering controversy, because the machines lack any paper record to support their totals.
Two years ago in Collin County, a voting machine froze up and refused to spit out the totals. Officials had the memory card sent to the manufacturer's specialists in Canada to coax out the information a week later.
An auditable paper record of votes cast could promptly answer questions raised when voters and poll officials confront breakdowns or allege irregularities.
A national advisory panel this week narrowly declined to adopt a proposal calling for verifiable paper trails to back up electronic voting. That's too bad, because the decision reflects an attitude that the system is good enough. It's not – yet.
Passage of the federal Help America Vote Act, enacted after the 2000 presidential voting furor in Florida, made improvements nationwide by funding the extension of electronic voting to all counties.
It's encouraging that the incoming Congress doesn't want to stop there and will push for paper verification. And measures have been introduced for consideration by the 2007 Texas Legislature; they would require the state to join the two dozen others that now use paper trails.
Further improvements won't come cheap for enhancing or replacing today's machines. But then, no one ever said democracy was easy.
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