Helping to Slave America: Concerns mount over electronic voting
/But around the country, a growing number of election officials, observers and reform groups are expressing concern about systems such as Tippecanoe County’s that will be used in the Nov. 6 general election.
A national report jointly released in July by Verified Voting, the Rutgers Law School Constitutional Litigation Clinic and Common Cause gave Indiana a grade of “needs improvement” when it comes to election readiness because of continued reliance on electronic voting machines that leave no paper trail of voter-verified ballots that can be used for recounts in close elections and audits of electronic results.
An estimated 60 percent of Indiana voters live in counties that rely primarily on direct record electronic, or DRE, devices to record votes. Some of those counties use touch-screen devices, and others use push-button terminals.
State and Tippecanoe County election officials defend such systems, saying electronic, paperless voting is accurate, less cumbersome than other methods and trouble-free or more so than systems they replaced, such as punch cards.
“I have complete confidence in our system,” said Christa Coffey, Tippecanoe County clerk and chief election officer. It’s an opinion shared by Democrats and Republicans on the county’s Board of Elections and Registration and formed after nearly a decade of voting on touch-screen devices.
But election officials in some states and at least one Indiana county — Monroe — are migrating back to paper ballots. Some localities, rather than giving up DRE devices altogether, are equipping them with printers that let the voter see his or her vote before casting the ballot. The roll of printed ballots, similar to a cash register tape, becomes a permanent record of the election.
Coffey said she would not be opposed to such an option. However, even if county officials thought the added expense worthwhile, state election regulations don’t allow such add-on devices. The state must approve all voting devices, and Coffey said those add-ons have not been certified.
“Anything that boosts voter confidence, I’m in favor of,” Coffey said.
Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting Foundation, said it’s not unusual for election officials to have “complete confidence” in the system they are using. “Up until something goes wrong and it’s impossible to recover from the error.”
Indiana’s touch-screen election system could face a major test Nov. 6 in the statewide race for U.S. Senate. Democrat Joe Donnelly and Republican Richard Mourdock are running neck-and-neck, according to the latest polls. A statewide recount of electronically recorded votes has never been done in Indiana, although recounts have been completed in Tippecanoe County and elsewhere.
Coffey notes that each touch-screen voting machine has a built-in backup memory system that can be used to display or print a record of ballots cast on that machine if for some reason the primary memory card is lost, compromised or fails to function.
According to Verified Voting’s report — Counting Votes 2012 released in July — it is “highly likely” that some voting systems will fail in counties across the country during the upcoming election.
More than 300 voting machine problems were reported during the 2010 midterm elections, and during every election in the past decade, computerized voting systems were faulted for miscounting votes, shutting down during use, losing votes or just not starting, the report said.
Smith’s cited a well-known case in North Carolina where voting machines in one county “lost” 4,400 votes because the machines were programmed incorrectly. The state now requires direct record electronic devices to also provide a paper backup the voter can see and verify. [MORE]
