State should adopt paper-record reforms to safeguard vote

Re the March 21 article State voting worries persist: In an effort to rid the system of hanging chads, butterfly ballots and smudged pencil marks, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which requires voters to be able to verify their ballots before they are cast and counted.

Florida and Miami Dade-County Elections Department say that HAVA doesn't require that the voter personally verify the paper record. They say that it is sufficient if the voter can verify a screen ballot, and that a printout of the information stored in the machine can be printed later for auditing. They say that the iVotronic touch-screen voting system used by Miami-Dade County is in full compliance with HAVA.

I disagree. Assuming that the only record of the vote is an electronic one, that record could be lost if files are corrupted or destroyed. If an electronic-voting machine has been tampered with or malfunctions, then the votes recorded are corrupted, and the only record of the vote is corrupted, too. I have no doubt that computer experts can figure out how to tamper with these machines.

Technology exists that lets people vote by touch screen and also verify a paper record of their vote. The paper record stays in the machine and can be counted at the end of the day to verify the electronic count. This way, we can audit elections and have meaningful recounts, if necessary. Moreover, even if a worm or virus causes the electronic data to be lost, we still have a paper record with which to certify the election.

The integrity of the election process is paramount in a democracy. I sponsored a resolution requiring any electronic system used in Miami-Dade to produce a permanent paper record with a manual-audit capacity. The commission voted to research the cost, implementation and technology needed and is still awaiting a report from the elections department.

How much is it worth to our society to make sure that all votes cast are counted accurately, and that citizens have confidence in the result? I, for one, don't want to repeat the errors of 2000, 2002 and perhaps even 2004.

JIMMY L. MORALES, County Commissioner, District 7, Miami