Q & A: Two sides of electronic voting issue

Published on: 02/15/04

Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Carlos Campos interviewed leaders on both sides of the electronic voting machine issue. He spoke with Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox in her Capitol office in Atlanta on Jan. 5. Richard Searcy of Voter Independence Project responded to questions sent to him via e-mail on Feb. 4. Here are transcripts of those interviews.
Pro: Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox
?
Computer scientists working for prestigious institutions such as Stanford and Johns Hopkins universities have raised serious concerns about the security of touch-screen voting machines. Are these machines as susceptible to electronic fraud as these academics say?
?
These are very intelligent people who have absolutely no knowledge about elections. We have a whole protocol . . . around how we use the machines. You will never have a perfect piece of machinery, whether it's mechanical, electronic or whatever, to be used in a business, an election, in an office or in your home. But if you have a piece of machinery and you set it up to be used with specific protocols and specific procedures, that's what adds the level of security to the system.
?
Do you think it's impossible to tamper with an election electronically?
?
Certainly not. I think it is virtually impossible to tamper with it given our protocols, but we have the tests that could determine if some mischief had occurred before election day. And then, because we know how things are stored, we know who has access . . . we have the ability to pretty well track down where some problems could have occurred. I'm not aware of any incident in the United States of America with any local jurisdiction using these machines that has established that tampering can occur. We have a very sad history in Georgia of election fraud that occurs very easily when you start dealing with paper ballots and mechanical lever machines that can be manipulated by anybody, not by a computer scientist ? by anybody. I think this machine dramatically curtails the opportunities for fraud that have plagued this state for decades. When you compare it to what we've been operating and using in elections for the last century, this is so much more secure.
?
Some of the touch-screen machines' toughest critics have implied that Georgia's elections in 2002 may have been rigged. They point to the upset victories of Gov. Sonny Perdue and U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss as evidence of political chicanery. How do you feel about such remarks?
?
It is absolutely laughable. You're not hearing those kind of comments come from people in Georgia that know the dynamics of those races. We know the various groups that were mad with [defeated Gov.] Roy Barnes. We know the relentless beating that [defeated U.S. Sen.] Max Cleland took from President Bush and the national Republican Party, that cast him in very unfavorable lights . . . If somebody were trying to rig it for the Republicans, why didn't I lose? Why didn't the lieutenant governor lose? Why didn't other Democratic incumbent officeholders lose? It is a total, total lack of knowing what was going on in the state of Georgia.
?
There is a bill pending in Congress that would require the addition of a printer to touch-screen voting machines, which would essentially require that voters be able to review a hard copy of their vote once it's cast so they can verify its accuracy. You are on record as opposing such a copy. Why do you oppose the voter-verified audit trail when it could easily silence some of your critics?
?
The real problem to me is the problems that it creates. The real history in Georgia that we've had of voter fraud comes largely from the handling of paper. If you have a paper receipt ? think about this whole process. No. 1, you already get to review your vote on the screen. If you print out a receipt and then somebody looks at that receipt and says, "Oh, well, I don't think I voted for that person" or "Gee, I want to change my mind," are you going to somehow set up the machine to violate the secrecy of the ballot so that you can go back in and revote and cancel that vote? What are you going to do with that piece of paper if they say it's not right because their vote has already been cast? Or you give it to them before it's cast and you're going to sit there and have the printer running all day like they can go back and forth now on the computer screen as many times as they want to at no additional cost or real delay? So it starts with the problem of what does it give you that you don't already have, because you're already reviewing the screen with your choices. If your argument is that these machines can be rigged and the summary screen can be rigged ? well, my goodness, the paper receipt could be printed in a rigged fashion. It adds not one iota of security to the process that you don't already get from having the summary screen of your vote and getting to review your choices.
?
Diebold Election Systems, the company that provides Georgia's electronic voting machines, has come under fire for some of its alleged practices and public remarks. An internal memo suggested the company wanted to gouge the state of Maryland, making a paper printout of the ballot cost-prohibitive. Then statements were made by the parent company's CEO about his support for President Bush, which alarmed some people. Do you have confidence in Diebold? Have you spoken with the company about some of its missteps?
?
I have told them they are their own worst enemy because they have been lax in the way they've operated. I think, in part, it comes from the fact that Diebold's main business has always been the banking industry. And, frankly, I think they were way behind the curve in addressing that new kind of environment in which they were operating. There's no doubt that they have been lax in how they maintain their internal Web sites and correspondence and that kind of thing. The remark by the president about anything ? even his participation for any candidate, Republican or Democrat ? was about as stupid a thing as I can imagine a CEO would do. But given all that, do I still like their product? Yes.
?
I know you are proud of leading Georgia to its status as the first state to completely change over to touch-screen voting. Is the success of these machines important to any future political ambitions you may have?
?
I don't know and I don't care. We did this because it had to be done and, as the state's chief election official, I was responsible for fixing a major problem in this state, which was, namely, the loss of almost 94,000 valid votes for president of the United States in Georgia, on my watch. We had to fix that, and I was determined to fix it and not go through another election cycle having voters going into a polling place knowing that there was a great likelihood their vote would not be registered because of the worn-out equipment we used in this state.
?
Do you think most Georgians have accepted these machines?
?
I can tell you from my personal, anecdotal experience . . . I get good feedback about how much the voters liked these machines ? how proud they are that Georgia did something rather sophisticated involving technology. For all of our terrible standings on some educational lists, and SAT scores and high school outs, my experience is the voters are very pleased that we did this, that we took the lead, that we are doing something progressive and they liked it.
?

?
Con: Richard Searcy, database administrator and member, Voter Independence Project
?
Why do you believe Georgia's electronic voting machines are susceptible to election fraud?
?
Because there is no way to determine if the machines are doing what they are supposed to be doing. The state offers testing and certification as the only buffer from fraud, but the software that was used in the 2002 midterm elections in Georgia was neither tested or certified before voters used it. How does Cathy Cox offer testing and certification as her argument against a real audit trail, and then allow Diebold to use untested and uncertified software? Sixty-seven memory cards which hold the vote totals came up missing in Fulton County, and another 10 memory cards went missing in Dekalb County in the 2002 Georgia elections, and the state recovered vote totals from the hard drive. Hard drive results from untested software can never be trusted. Quite obviously, we cannot depend on the process, testing, or certification to protect voters from fraud, machine failure, "Trojan horse" programming, or bugs and glitches in the system.
?
Do you believe the elections of Gov. Sonny Perdue and Sen. Saxby Chambliss were aided by fraudulent means? Why?
?
One does not have to believe that fraud has taken place to believe that accountability must be resident in the system. The legitimacy of the Georgia elections are being questioned in articles and publications all over the world.
?
The New York Times printed an article called "Democracy at Risk," which stated, "Imagine in November, the candidate trailing in the polls wins an upset victory ? but all the districts where he does much better than expected use touch-screen voting machines. Meanwhile, leaked internal e-mails from the companies that make these machines suggest widespread errors and possible fraud. What would this do to this nation?" It goes on to say, "Unfortunately this story is completely plausible. In fact, you can tell a similar story about some of the results in the 2002 midterm elections, especially in Georgia." GQ Magazine published an article called "Get Ready to Have Your Vote Stolen" that specifically spoke to the legitimacy of elections in Georgia. Georgia has become the model for what is wrong with paperless voting.
?
Do you support adding a paper receipt to the electronic machines? Why? Will that solve the problems as you see them?
?
Software can be manipulated to produce any results that the developer desires, and just as one could not offer the IRS a spreadsheet as an audit, the voter needs the same "hard copy" paper trail to ensure that the system is doing what it is supposed to do. Many states all over America have concluded that a paper receipt is a necessary component of electronic voting based on wide-ranging professional and academic studies, the suspect actions of DRE [Direct Recording Electronic] vendors, the use of untested, uncertified and proprietary software, and documented anomalies and flaws in the paperless voting system and process. California ordered an audit of 17 counties that used the Diebold system in the 2003 recall election and found that not a single county used tested or certified software in the election. The state officials were outraged, and the secretary of state, Kevin Shelley, has ordered an audit of all California counties, and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D?Calif.) has introduced legislation to mandate a paper trail in the 2004 election, which moves the date up from the 2006 date that has already passed. By providing a paper trail, the state can randomly audit a percentage of the state election total to ensure integrity and all recounts should come from the paper trail. As the Nevada secretary of state, Dean Heller, has said, "A paper trail is an intrinsic component of voter confidence."
?
Who would want to "steal" an election?
?
America has a long history of stolen, fraudulent and corrupt elections. African-Americans have been disenfranchised by fraudulent elections throughout American history, particuarly in Georgia. The 2000 election that brought George Bush to power and the debacle in Florida, with its purging of blacks from voter rolls, suspect police stops and Supreme Court decision, is exactly the type of tainted election that America must avoid in order to preserve the integrity of the election system and the confidence of the voter.
?
Why do you think polls conducted by the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia show that most Georgians are comfortable with touch-screen voting?
?
This poll was taken last November before many of the problems with Diebold and paperless voting were known to the public. Tell Georgians the fact that the 2002 midterm elections were conducted with uncertified and untested software and then ask them if they are comfortable with touchscreen voting without a paper trail, and undoubtedly the results will drastically change. This is not a question of whether one likes one soft drink or another. This is a question that goes the the heart of democracy, and Georgians deserve much better than a poll to address the now-documented and known failures of paperless voting.
?
It seems like many of the critics are anti-Bush, anti-Republican. Is this a partisan issue? Why does there seem to be so much anti-Republican sentiment?
?
This is untrue. The Republican secretary of state of Nevada, Dean Heller, has mandated that all Nevada voting machines be equipped with a printer, and he commissioned a study that called the Diebold system "a threat to the integrity of the election process." The Republican secretary of state of Ohio, Kenneth Blackwell, commissioned his own study that found 57 flaws in the Diebold system, which caused him to suspend any DRE purchases until further review. There are many Republican legislators all over America that are as concerned about paperless voting as many Democrats are, even though many voting machine vendors are owned and controlled by Republicans like Walden O'Dell of Diebold, who promised Ohio fund-raisers that he would deliver Ohio to George Bush. This is a nonpartisan issue. Fortune magazine, hardly a liberal publication, has called paperless voting "the worst technology of 2003."