Senators question e-voting paper trail
One said the printouts would discriminate against blind voters 
News Story by Grant Gross   IDG News Service

JUNE 21, 2005 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Calls for the U.S. government to mandate a voter-verified paper trail with electronic voting machines ran into opposition today from two powerful members of a Senate committee, with one senator objecting that a printout would discriminate against blind people.

Voting accuracy advocates, and some lawmakers, have repeatedly called for printers to be attached to electronic voting machines. Advocates of voter-verified paper trail ballots say they would allow voters to check a printout to see what happened inside the direct electronic recording machines (DRE).

But Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), chairman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, suggested that attaching printers to existing DREs could cause equipment problems on Election Day. "I'm leery of attaching [a printer] on the side," he said. "It seems we're adding a level of complexity."

Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), the committee's ranking Democrat, objected because a paper-only verification system couldn't be used by the blind and some other people with disabilities.

"By insisting on paper, you're denying people who cannot read because they cannot see," Dodd said during a hearing attended by several people with disabilities. "I would vehemently oppose any legislation that excludes the ability of those people to have the right to the same thing that those who can read have."

Legislation that doesn't give equal rights to disabled people "is not going to happen," said Dodd, author of the voting reform legislation that became the Help America Vote Act of 2002. If paper-trail ballots are required, audio verification should also be required, Dodd said.

Five bills introduced in Congress this year would require voter-verified paper ballots with DREs. A bill introduced by Dodd would require a choice of paper, audio or visual verification with DREs.

Dodd drew support from James Dickson, who is blind. Dickson, vice president for governmental affairs at the American Association of People with Disabilities, said he had one election worker question why he wanted to vote for a certain candidate, and another election worker refused to help him get all the way through the ballot because the polling place was busy. People with disabilities don't want promises that they will have equal voting rights "just around the corner," he said.

"I voted secretly for the first time last year," Dickson said. "For the first time, I was equal, my vote was secret, and I knew who I voted for. Do not treat us like second-class citizens."

But DRE paper trails would give voters an assurance that their votes were being counted correctly, said supporters of the technology. Even if blind people could not use printouts, the majority of voters would have an assurance that an e-voting machine correctly counted their votes, said Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.). Nevada used paper-trail ballots with DREs during the 2004 general election and saw them widely accepted by voters, he said.

"There is no way to build a completely secure electronic system," Ensign said. "All I'm trying to do is make sure the machines are kept honest."

Two computer scientists disagreed over the effectiveness of voter-verified paper-trail ballots during the hearing. DREs are tested before and after elections, and election officials have better forensic tools to find errors on DREs than they have for other types of ballots, said Ted Selker, chairman of the CalTech/MIT Voter Technology Project. And in the unlikely event that a group of hackers compromised e-voting machines, they also would be smart enough to program the machine to give false printouts, he said.

E-voting machine problems continue to be minor compared with voter registration and other issues, Selker said.

But David Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford University, said that without some kind of verification, voters have no idea what's going on inside a DRE. "It's not good enough for elections to be accurate; the public has to know that they're accurate," he said. "Unfortunately, the current paperless e-voting machines being sold now are totally opaque."

Although e-voting machines are not connected to the public Internet, there are dozens of ways for employees of DRE vendors to program vote-changing schemes into the machines, Dill said. "If we want to make a trustworthy paperless machine, we don't know how to do it," he said.

Dill called on Congress to push optical-scan ballots, which he said are more secure than DREs. Dodd, however, questioned why the U.S. would move backward and abandon newer technologies for paper-based optical scan systems.

Most of the predicted security problems involving DREs have not actually happened, said Conny McCormack, registrar-recorder and county clerk for Los Angeles County. Los Angeles County uses DREs for voters who choose to vote before election day, and the county had more than 3 million voters more voters than 41 U.S. states during the 2004 general election.

Los Angeles County has had no problems with DREs since it began using them in 1999, McCormack said. A federal requirement for paper-trail ballots would drive up the cost of DREs by as much as 35% and could prevent states from adopting future voting technologies, she said.

"The fact is, the existing DRE systems without the paper trail have a proven track record," McCormack said. "The criticisms that DRE systems are more susceptible to tampering are completely unfounded. There is not one scintilla of evidence to support these claims."

Printers attached to DREs can jam, and their installation and maintenance will require additional poll-worker training, she said. "Simplicity, not complexity, is what makes elections work."