Lawmakers Want Paper Records of E-Ballots
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Just five weeks before election day, federal legislators are increasingly casting doubt on electronic voting terminals and demanding that touchscreen computers produce paper records.
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(InfoWorld) - A coalition of voting rights groups on Monday called on the U.S. Congress to pass legislation that would require electronic voting machines to have printers attached as a way to audit the touch-screen results. But the lack of a paper trail for many e-voting machines was only one problem among many during the 2006 U.S. elections, said speakers at the Elections: Looking Forward conference, sponsored by Common Cause, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and other groups. Many of the problems attributed to e-voting machines were caused by a lack of training for poll workers or administrative mistakes, said Efrain Escobedo, director of voter engagement at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. Poll workers observed by his group didn't know how to change the paper in machines with paper trails or didn't know how to reboot machines, he said. Participants in the event also described several other problems not related to e-voting: poll workers demanding photo identification when it wasn't required by law, polling places lacking voting materials in languages other than English, polling places inaccessible to disabled people, and long lines. But several speakers called on Congress to pass the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act, which would require paper trail printouts with touch-screen e-voting machines. Representative Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat, introduced the bill Feb. 5, after a similar piece of legislation failed to pass during the 2005-06 congressional session. The Holt bill has 183 cosponsors, close to half of the House of Representatives. Congress needs to act in the next six to eight months for the legislation to affect the 2008 elections, said Ralph Neas, president and chief executive officer of People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group. Neas pointed to the 2006 vote in Sarasota Country, Florida, where e-voting machines did not record a vote from more than 18,000 people in a congressional race decided by less than 400 votes. "Sarasota was a disgrace," Neas said. "Eighteen thousand votes ... inexplicably disappeared into cyberspace. But it's a teachable moment. We've got 18,000 faces now that we can put on the problem." Not all speakers agreed that Congress should move ahead immediately with paper trails. Many visually impaired voters were able to vote without assistance on touch-screen machines for the first time in 2006, said Christina Galindo-Walsh, senior staff attorney with the National Disability Rights Network. Paper trail printouts would again create a two-tier voting system in which some disabled people don't have access to the same information as other voters, she said. Galindo-Walsh and Jim Dickson, vice president for government affairs at the American Association of People with Disabilities, also said it was too late for Congress to mandate paper trail ballots by the 2008 presidential election. E-voting machine vendors wouldn't be able to produce enough printers by 2008, Galindo-Walsh said. The Help America Vote Act (HAVA), passed in 2002, mandated standards for voting machines, and those standards are just being completed now, Dickson added. Those standards still need to be tested, and new machines meeting those standards need to be built, he said. "Either you lower the standards for the election equipment, or you live with the timeline that looks like 2010," he said. "You cannot have it both ways." But many voters now question e-voting systems, added Melanie Campbell, executive director and CEO of the Coalition for Black Civic Participation. "The reality is voters are losing confidence in the system," she said.
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Six U.S. states participating in Super Tuesday primary elections are at high risk for voting-machine malfunction or tampering because they don&#39;t have paper backups, according to a report released by the Verified Voting Foundation and Common Cause.
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After nearly 50,000 Michigan Democrats cast ballots over the Internet in February, academics eagerly sought election data that would help them determine what types of people voted online. But scholars around the country complain that they haven't been able to get statistics from the Feb. 7 caucus.
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Electronic voting machines should not be used in the United States without a paper-based backup to ensure they tally votes correctly, computer experts working for the U.S. government say.
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Researcher who found vulnerabilities in California's e-voting systems looks ahead to better auditing.
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ORLANDO, Florida -- A US district judge ruled Monday that Florida election officials have no legal obligation to provide voter-verifiable paper trails for electronic voting machines, but it would be better if they did.
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Cuyahoga county officials in Ohio are considering a switch away from touch-screen e-voting systems to optical scan devices -- a move that could mean scrapping a $17 million investment in Diebold Election Systems hardware.
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By RACHEL KONRAD     CARSON CITY, Nev.  -- In what could become a model for other states, Nevada voters on Tuesday became the first in the nation to cast ballots in a statewide election on computers that printed paper records of electronic ballots...
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Electoral districts opting to use&#160;electronic voting machines&#160;face significant costs, some hidden, according to a new report from the French Internet Rights Forum.The machines cost an average of &#8364;4,400 ($6,300) each for a voting station serving 800 to 1000 electors, but electoral districts faced many other costs associated with their use, according to the Forum. Some districts had difficulty evaluating those costs, the French IT lobbying group wrote in &quot;An interim report on the use of voting machines for electronic voting in the political elections of 2007.&quot;The report, based on a questionnaire sent to election managers in districts using the machines, does not deal with other matters of public concern, including the security and usability of the machines: the Forum plans to cover those in a fuller report next year.Use of electronic voting machines has grown in France in recent years: 15 electoral districts used them in local and European elections in 2004, 55 districts used them in a referendum in 2005, and 82 sought permission to use them for the presidential election, although four subsequently changed their minds.Around 3.3 percent of French electors live in districts that used voting machines in the presidential election: the others used paper ballots.Traditionally, French electors receive a separate ballot paper for each candidate standing in an election. They place the paper for their preferred candidate in an envelope, and then drop the envelope in a ballot box, which is transparent so that everyone can see it contained no votes at the start of the election.One district said it expected to save tons of paper through not having to provide the ballot papers -- but not all paper could be avoided, as the rules require that each elector be mailed an envelope containing a flyer for each candidate.For paper elections, that envelope must also contain the corresponding ballot papers for each candidate, so that electors will recognize them when they arrive at the polling station. That mailing is paid for by central government.Saving paper did not mean saving money for districts using voting machines: they had to pay for an additional mailing showing how the candidates&#39; &quot;ballot papers&quot; would appear on screen. Some of these had to be sent at express letter rates because of delays in programming the machines. No district questioned had foreseen those additional costs, according to the Forum.At the legislative elections in May and June, the on-screen presentation of ballots presented another problem. In districts where there were many candidates, it was not possible for some voting machines to display all their names and party affiliations on the screen at the same time. Meeting this legal requirement is not a problem with ballot papers, which can be placed side by side on a large table.Some districts said their decision to use machines was based on cost, as they saw the use of electronic voting machines as a way to cut down on the labor-intensive process of counting ballot papers. One district estimated this at &#8364;13,000 per election. Only one district surveyed said it expected its costs to increase.Several districts had to buy additional machines, doubling them up at the last minute in some polling stations when it became apparent that voters could not operate the machines fast enough. However, the French elections regulator has ruled that only one machine can be used per polling station, as under French law, each machine is considered equivalent to a ballot box, and to avoid fraud, only one ballot box is used per station. That leaves such districts with the additional administrative cost of creating new polling stations, staffing them and informing electors of their new voting place in future elections.Among the other hidden expenses cited by the forum are the potential cost of replacement machines. The districts surveyed have not budgeted to upgrade their to cope with evolving regulations or technological threats. One district expects its machines to last for 15 or 20 years, while others cited 5 to 10 year lifespans more realistic for battery-powered electronic devices.Other ongoing costs included secure storage of the machines to prevent tampering; service contracts and extensions to guarantees; software licenses; provision of additional devices for the blind or partially sighted, and fees for notaries certifying the condition of the machines.Districts have faced legal challenges -- so far unsuccessful -- to block the use of voting machines because of concerns about security or transparency. One charge is that while almost any elector is capable of verifying that the transparent ballot boxes are empty at the start of the election, few have the technical knowledge to verify that a machine showing a counter reset to zero has not been tampered with in some other way -- and in any case, electoral procedures do not allow citizens to conduct the in-depth investigations that would be required.Some of those questioned by the Forum called for central government to spend more money on educating voters about the security of the three models of voting machines authorized for use, and the type certification process the machines have gone through. Those models -- the iVotronic, manufactured by Election Systems &amp; Software and distributed in France by Datamatique; the Point &amp; Vote from Indra Sistemas, and the ESF1 from NV Nederlandsche Apparatenfabriek (Nedap) -- are certified for use indefinitely in France.&#160;
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Move arrives after complaints from underdog Democrat Dennis Kucinich and little-known Republican Albert Howard about "irregularities" in hand- versus electronically-counted ballots.
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Democrats say Republicans are trying to suppress the votes of minorities, the poor and the elderly by requiring documentation at the polls.
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Touch-screen voting machines in the Sunshine State insist 18,000 voters had no preference in a congressional race won by fewer than 400 votes. A recount is under way, but that just means printing a hard copy of the contested ballots. By Kim Zetter.
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Four years ago, about 2,300 voters cast their ballots before Election Day on state-of-the-art, push-button electronic voting machines. For 678 of them, their votes were never recorded.-The Washington Post
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Three congressmen are asking the General Accounting Office to investigate irregularities with voting machines during the presidential election, but they don't anticipate a change in election outcome. By Kim Zetter.
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BOSTON - Tens of millions of people will cast their votes Nov. 2 in one of the most hotly contested presidential elections in recent U.S. history. But voters across the U.S. will encounter different voting technologies and procedures, with many counties nationwide clinging to punchcard, lever machine and even paper ballots, and the transition to electronic voting moving slowly in many states.
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Two Democrats proposed legislation to reimburse states for printing paper ballots in case of problems with electronic voting machines on Nov. 7.