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Paper backup for voting is worth cost

Frank Devlin   The Morning Call    29 December 2005

No one said the 1950s would last forever. Still, it's a bit disorienting when symbols that typified the era ? whether you lived through the 1950s or not ? go away: Elvis, the terrifying yet straightforward Cold War, the idea of the one-income nuclear family.

And now, say goodbye to Bucks County's voting machines, commonly referred to as ''Eisenhower-era'' voting machines, which the county commissioners are planning to replace with electronic machines in coming months.

I liked the Ike-era machines. I liked the little metal switches that you moved by hand to indicate the candidate you wanted in each race. I liked the way pulling the lever felt and sounded. It was a satisfying ending to voting that I doubt can be matched by any electronic machine the county buys.

Still, the issue isn't whether the old machines should be going away. Their exit seems assured by the U.S. Help America Vote Act. The law says voting machines must be handicapped-accessible and able to tell voters when they haven't voted in every race, thereby giving them a chance to go back and make a ion if that was their intention. The Eisenhower-era machines aren't capable of either requirement.

The issue now is what kind of electronic machines the commissioners will to replace them.

The demand by the Bucks County Coalition for Voting Integrity that any machine the county chooses have the capability of producing a paper trail, so votes can be recounted independent of the computers that run the machines, makes sense.

Choosing machines that provide hard-copy backups would protect against malfunctions or fraud and give people who don't trust computers more faith in the voting system.

Americans need more faith in their voting system, not less.

In a recent Morning Call story by Hal Marcovitz, Bucks County Commissioner Charles H. Martin was quoted saying he has no objection to machines that make paper trails. He just doesn't want the county to have to pay extra for it.

Officials expect to pay about $7 million from the county for the new machines, with the rest covered by a grant. To not pay a bit more, even millions of dollars more, to get machines that can provide a paper backup is shortsighted. Can you put a price on the integrity of the voting process?

On its Web site, coalitionforvotingintegrity.org, the coalition says, ''Democracy begins with the integrity of our vote ? and ends without it.''

Bev Harris, founder of Black Box Voting, a national organization with concerns similar to Bucks County's group, said there are ways to get paper trails without breaking the bank. The answer, she said in an e-mail, is optical scan machines, which ''cost more per machine, but you need only one per precinct.''

With optical scan machines, voters fill out a paper form that is similar to an answer sheet for a standardized test. The machine reads the answers, and fancier versions can tell voters if they haven't voted in all races.

A competing electronic voting technology, touch screens, requires ''five to seven [machines] per precinct,'' Harris said. ''Op-scan machines cost from $5,000 to $6,000 each; touch screens cost $3,500 to $4,500 each.''

Opponents of the optical scan method, said coalition founder Mary Ann Gould, have said keeping optical scan ballots around is cumbersome and an incentive for more candidates to call for recounts.

Gould said she's not sure that's the case. But even if it is, she said, ''It's not that expensive to recount. That's minor. That's the cost of our keeping our officials honest.''



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