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Paper Trail for Electronic Ballots: Who Needs It?

 By
Warren Slocum
Chief Elections Officer &
Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder
San Mateo County

Computerized voting is here to stay. The only question is “should we blindly trust touch screen voting systems to capture and count our votes correctly?”

Opinions vary on that question. Surprisingly, some elections professionals say that touch screen voting systems can be trusted. But when voters are given the choice, most say, “absolutely not.” And the computer scientists who have studied this issue say, no way! For instance, Peter Neumann, principle scientist at SRI International, says, "there's no assurance that the vote that appears on the screen is the one that's recorded."

David Dill, professor of Computer Science at Stanford University states that the current generation of touch-screen voting systems "…pose an unacceptable risk that errors or deliberate election-rigging will go undetected, since they do not provide a way for the voters to verify independently that the machine correctly records and counts the votes they have cast."

Touch-Screen Voting Spreading

Computerized touch-screen voting is coming soon to a voting booth near you. Three counties Alameda, Plumas and Riverside currently use touch screen voting systems that do not print a voter verifiable ballot. Santa Clara and Orange recently signed contracts to implement those systems. Los Angeles, San Diego, San Bernardino and Solano are under a federal court order to get rid of their punch card voting systems by the primary election of 2004 and they will most likely buy touch-screens systems.

Other counties may choose to change to touch screen voting systems because the State has made $200 million available for voting system modernization.

We Need a Voter-Verifiable Paper Trail

Why should California require that voters check their electronic votes against a paper summary ballot?

The answer is so that California can have an accurate vote count and avoid the chaotic election scenarios that other states have experienced. The verification of the vote can help ensure the integrity of election results. It benefits the voters; election administrators, candidates and the voting companies.

The way a voter would check their vote is simple. After he or she completes the electronic ballot a paper summary prints out and the paper record is compared to the electronic record. Once satisfied, the voter simply pushes a button and the ballot is cast. The electronic ballot gets stored in computer memory and the paper ballot is deposited into a locked ballot box.

This process mirrors electronic processes at ATMs. Users complete an electronic transaction but they can verify the transaction via a printed receipt. Further verification occurs when the bank statement arrives.

How is a verification process good for election administrators? On election night, electronic ballots can produce a fast tally that will satisfy the media, the public and candidates. However, those results are only semi-official.

With a machine readable verifiable ballot, the Registrar of Voters can count the paper ballots with a different machine during the canvass of the votes that takes place during the 28 days after the election. Those totals can be compared to election night totals and the totals produced by the mandatory 1 percent manual recount.

All vote totals must balance before the election is officially certified.

And finally, aren’t touch screen voting companies tired of negative press? Shouldn’t they want their machines to work properly? One way to know if a computerized voting machine has a programming error is to give the voter the responsibility to verify compare their paper ballot to their electronic ballot.

The Opposition Speaks

If a voter check of ballot choices is a good idea why is their strong opposition? Some say it will cost too much. It does add an estimated $400 per unit. But if true costs are spread over time this number drops.

Critics also claim that poll workers can’t deal with the added technology. I don’t buy that argument. If trained properly, poll workers are up to the task because it is not complicated.

Some people claim it will take longer to vote. State law currently gives a voter up to 10 minutes in the voting booth.

The most naive argument against a paper trail is that the machines are accurate and tested properly before the election. It is argued that we don’t need to worry about hackers, Trojan Horses or programming mistakes.

Lastly, some organizations claim that the additional requirements of a printed verifiable ballot will delay the timetable for implementation of modern systems in California. If the market demanded voting machines with a paper trail you can bet that voting companies would respond.

The choice of providing voters an opportunity to check their votes is upon us. The consequences are serious. The final decision on this issue will be made in a few days by Kevin Shelley, California’s top election official and Secretary of State. David Jefferson, a senior computer scientist and member of the California Touch Screen Ad Hoc Task force has said, “from what I have been able to learn, it is almost certainly true that, as currently designed, DREs (touch-screen voting systems) have fatal security flaws so dangerous that they could allow people with access to the software to modify election results on a national level, and without detection. It is a matter of national security that we fix these flaws. Fortunately they can all be fixed with a single feature, voter verification, which simply allows voters to verify that their votes are cast as intended, and at a time in the voting transaction when the vote cannot be overwritten by software without detection.”

Can we afford to have another statewide computer fiasco like the DMV? Can we afford to have an election meltdown like Florida? Can we risk the integrity of our election process because we didn’t demand a voter verifiable paper audit trail?

No Errors Against Democracy

We can all agree that there should be no errors against Democracy. Voters should know that their vote counts and that every legal vote is counted correctly.

In order to avoid egregious voting errors in the future and ensure a smooth transition to electronic voting, voting companies should be ordered by our Secretary of State to do a better job and deliver voting systems that are reasonably priced, work correctly and that have a voter verifiable paper audit trail.

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Contact Warren Slocum
650 363 4988 | Voice
650 363 1903 | Fax
Email wslocum@smcare.org