Audit the touch screens to monitor under-votes

By Palm Beach Post Editorial

Friday, July 30, 2004

When U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson called for an independent audit of the state's touch-screen voting systems, Secretary of State Glenda Hood had the audacity to offer him a tour and an explanation of the machines' inner workings. That sort of gesture might have satisfied the public during the initial anticipation of the high-tech alternative to hanging chads and over-votes, but it's not enough anymore.

Ms. Hood undoubtedly knows the risk of opening up the system to scrutiny by experts who have no ties to vendors or politicians. Just last year, a Johns Hopkins University study shattered the aura of invincibility surrounding Diebold touch-screen machines, which are used in Ohio. The report described many ways to beat the system's safeguards and suggested that hackers could alter results sent over telephone lines and that a 15-year-old could counterfeit a critical component. The news didn't alter Florida's commitment because Diebold has not been certified to sell its touch-screen machines here.

Even without Diebold, however, Sen. Nelson is right to have cause for concern. Election results reveal a much greater number of under-votes — ballots that show no vote at all — on touch-screen machines, which Palm Beach and Martin counties now use, than on the fill-in-the-oval optical-scan ballots used in 52 Florida counties, including St. Lucie. The differing rates in the March single-issue Democratic presidential primary is alarming, since the most frequent explanation for under-votes is that people make a deliberate choice to skip a race.
 Why, though, would touch-screen voters be 12 times more likely to skip a race than optical-scan voters? Is it that voters can't get the hang of the new technology? Is it easier to cast no vote on a touch screen, which issues warnings but can't take away a person's right to not choose? To eliminate inadvertent under-votes, the state should add a line to every ballot question that would allow an extra choice: no vote at all. Legislators worry that some candidates may get fewer votes than no choice, but that can happen now. It's called under-voting, and it creates public doubt.

More doubts emerged from Miami-Dade County this week, when election officials couldn't explain how they lost touch-screen voting records from elections in 2002. Further eroding public trust is the Division of Elections' position on manual recounts. Even though the machine can produce a record for recounts, officials have passed regulations saying that it's not worth the trouble. That's because the machines cast no light on voter intent. State law, though, doesn't order recounts only if voter intent can be discerned. It just says, under specific circumstances, "do it."

Touch-screen machines are in 15 Florida counties. They are expected to account for about half the Florida votes cast by African-Americans in November's presidential election, prompting Sen. Nelson's appropriate decision to go over Ms. Hood's head and request a federal investigation under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Delray Beach, has argued that the machines are flawed. His lawsuits seek printers to provide a verifiable paper trail. The courts have rejected his pleas, and printers cannot be ready in time for this year's elections.

Sen. Nelson's audit, however, could be in place for the Aug. 31 primary. If the system works, the audit would give voters a sorely lacking sense of confidence. Ms. Hood's reluctance to allow such a review suggests that she has no confidence in the system.