Voting machines leave room for fraud

Stephen M. Williams   The Roanoke Times   15 November 2005

Williams lives in Blacksburg.

As I walked into the polls, I was suprised to see our venerable lever machines replaced with the "WinVote" touch consoles for voting. As I was called up to one of the consoles, an attendant walked up with me carrying a card. He stuck it in a slot, then removed it and backed away from the voting area.

It was not a paper "confirmation card" he was carrying but a key card that initializes the machine to record a vote.

Although I was a little out of touch with the timing of the introduction of these devices, I was under the impression that Virginia was requiring a literal paper trail for its electronic voting machines. Apparently it is not. The lack of any way to verify that the votes recorded were the votes cast is very disturbing. How will I ever have any confidence that my vote is counted for those I actually voted for?

For those who do not see any issues with these machines, I want to emphasize the differences between mechanical and electronic voting machines.

Mechanical voting devices can be rigged, but it is difficult to accomplish and fairly easy to detect. Any mechanical device, if rigged to vote for one candidate or the other fraudulently, will do so consistently if tested before or after an election.

Electronic voting machines that do not have any paper receipt or other verifiable recording medium maintain everything in memory. They are also computers that have hardware and software and are extremely complex as compared with mechanical voting machines. The more complex design is much, much harder to "certify"; if it's rigged, it is much, much harder to determine that it has been.

Whereas a mechanical machine can be rigged to vote for Candidate X every 20th vote, the electronic machine can change the 20th vote, then the 300th, then the 312th. It can be programmed to vote fraudulently in an extremely subtle way. A subtle fraud, while not guaranteed to elect Candidate X, would increase substantially his or her chances of winning, especially in tightly contested elections.

I'm not claiming that this vote was rigged. As a matter of fact, I'm trying to get this essay finished before the polls close so I'm not seen as a "sore loser." However, we should all be wary and work to make sure that our democracy is preserved. Voting is your right. Making sure that your vote counts for your candidate is also your right. Don't let it be taken away without even being aware of it.