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Voter paper trail might be a blind alley

The Roanoke Times    27 November 2005

Virginia's first election using electronic voting machines statewide was sure to create anxiety among people who know enough about computers to distrust them.

But I think what most distressed Montgomery County Registrar Randall Wertz about two critical op-ed essays that ran in The Roanoke Times after the Nov. 8 vote is that both came from Blacksburg Wertz's territory.

He was offended.

"I take great pride in my job in making sure the election is fair and equitable to everybody," he told me in a phone call in which he managed to be at once genial and agitated. He wanted equal time.

Wertz detailed why the county had replaced its familiar, though hardly foolproof, lever machines with Advanced Voting Solutions WINvote machines: to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act, passed after Florida's 2000 presidential election debacle, and to comply in time to get a $412,000 federal reimbursement.

The county chose from among six machines approved by the Virginia State Board of Elections, he said, and it picked the model with the newest technology, so as to last a long time.

And Wertz explained all the security steps the state and locality take against tampering, most not apparent to voters on Election Day: the ballot approval by the state Board of Elections; the loading of the ballot in the machines by a third party in the presence of the Montgomery County Electoral Board; the testing; the sealing and locking of machines in carts for transport to precincts; the procedures followed by precinct election officers in setting up and closing down voting sites.

"Also, the results are telephoned into my office, not sent electronically, which eliminates any chance of tampering or hacking. No unauthorized person has access to these machines and could not affect the results," he wrote in a long follow-up letter after our initial chat.

As for authorized people who do have access, he wrote, "Our officers of election are your friends and neighbors. They are registered voters, represent both major political parties, take their jobs seriously and are there to ensure a fair and secure election."

My mom was an election judge in Missouri, and I can attest to her unwavering sense of duty, honesty and fair play. But, I told Wertz, I think many concerns about digital voting are rooted in a fear that some evil genius somewhere "out there" will embed fraudulent software in machines to manipulate votes in a way that election officials would never be able to detect. He thought that unlikely.

"If a company was to do that or an individual in a company, and it was discovered, then that company would be out of business," he said. But he knows who planted the seed of doubt. "The chief executive officer of Diebold got up in front of a Republican fundraiser before the 2000 election and told everybody he was going to do everything he could to deliver the election to [George W.] Bush. I'm sure he's sorry he said that. His company has lost millions of dollars because of that statement. And all the other manufacturers are having to deal with this."

Wertz apparently was referring to a 2003 invitation to a Republican Party fundraiser, sent out over Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell's signature, that said, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." O'Dell later told The New York Times that he had not written the letter himself, and it had been a "huge mistake," as head of a company that makes voting machines, to openly support Bush's re-election.

That leaves voters to fret that someone who only privately supports a party or a candidate will manipulate electronic balloting. And that leads to calls for Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trails, printouts that a voter can check to make sure his or her vote was recorded accurately.

Wertz thinks these are unnecessary and undesirable. The company that makes the voting machine does not program it, he noted. And in Montgomery County, "people can't tap into it from outside the voting place. It's not hooked up to a FAX," so the results can't be intercepted and changed.

And he refers VVPAT advocates to the real-world experience of Clark County, Nev., which retrofitted electronic machines with a VVPAT in the November 2004 election. The paper cartridges were subject to jamming, they churned out 36 inches of paper for every 12-inch ballot cast and they slowed recounts to the pace of paper-ballot days: "In a recount that took place in Clark County, it took five employees four hours to recount 75 ballots. In Sacramento, Calif., it took them 127 hours to recount 114 VVPAT ballots."

And for what?

"In these recounts it was also shown that the machine numbers were exactly the same as the paper totals."

If Montgomery County retrofitted its machines, Wertz said, the current guesstimate is it'd cost $1,000 per machine. "We have 115 machines, and I'm going to ask for more because we're going to have to split some precincts because they're getting so large. And, as they showed in Nevada, the numbers come out the same."

"I know we'll always have conspiracy theorists," he said. "They're sure the government people are out to get 'em.

"Well, we're not."



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