Voting on Voting
Seven years after Florida's hanging chad debacle, three years after voting irregularities in Ohio, and six months after 18,000 votes disappeared in a House race in Sarasota, Congress is finally moving to fix the country's electronic voting systems. Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) has introduced legislation to mandate improvements to ensure that our voting machines are secure and accurate, and the bill is on the fast-track in the House. It may come to a vote next week.
This is a significant breakthrough.
In less than five years, the vast majority of Americans have gone from using punch card and lever machines to having their votes counted by electronic touch screens and optical scanners. These machines promised to usher in an era of fast, reliable, and accessible voting. But they spawned doubt and suspicion, clouding the issue of voting systems in partisanship and conspiracy thinking.
In 2005, the Brennan Center put together a Task Force of distinguished scientists, voting machine experts, and security professionals to conduct the nation's first methodical threat analysis of the major electronic voting systems. We concluded that the worries of activists and so-called conspiracy theorists indeed had some basis in fact. Every single one of the electronic machines we studied was vulnerable to security problems. In fact, someone could use a PDA to tamper with every machine in a polling place. Of course, that could be enough to swing a close statewide election without much fear of detection.
That's the bad news.
The good news is that the major vulnerabilities can be corrected and guarded against with relative ease. We can ban wireless components in voting systems to make them less susceptible to attack. We can ensure that all of our machines produce voter-verified paper records – and ban those that do not. And we can assure that election officials conduct routine post-election audits, comparing the paper trail to the electronic records to discourage tampering and detect it if it occurs. Congressman Holt's bill addresses all of these fixes.
Unlike some other more divisive election issues, voting machine security and reliability is a goal lawmakers in both parties should rally around. Rep. Tom Davis, the top Republican on the committee that oversees election law, has cosponsored Holt's bill. (Davis was chair of the House Republican campaign committee. He can't be tarred as a RINO – a "Republican In Name Only.") Florida's GOP Governor Charlie Crist stood with Democratic Rep. Jerry Wexler in denouncing the state's touch-screen voting and endorsing optical scan machines.
A key committee passed Holt's bill last week. But storm clouds loom. Local election officials have expressed legitimate concern that the bill does not give states adequate time and resources to implement its mandates.
Others would use this bill as a vehicle for their own partisan purposes. Even as the myth of widespread voter fraud is being debunked in the wake of the U.S. Attorney scandal, some Republican members of the House have attempted to attach voter ID requirements to the Holt bill.
It would be a shame if partisan fearmongering derailed needed reform. Deadlines can be adjusted as this legislation moves forward, and appropriators can be held accountable if they fail to provide sufficient funds to get the job done. Controversial measures such as requirements for proof of citizenship or other onerous ID can be debated separately. In Congress, when something controversial is added to a widely agreed upon measure, it's called a poison pill. If lawmakers let a fracas over ID derail this needed and commonsensical plan, then the next time Election Day rolls around … with the potential for miscues, miscounts, and polling place meltdowns … voters will know whom to blame.
In some sense, it is ultimately irrelevant whether the 2000 Presidential election was stolen.
What's much more important is that there was no way of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that it wasn't. That's totally unacceptable for a country that is supposed to be based on government "of, by, and for the people".
Voter-verified paper-trail records and basic, straightforward auditing of counts is the bare minimum of what's acceptable.
May 16, 2007 2:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm all for verifiability but I get put off by statements like:
"(A) Task Force of distinguished scientists, voting machine experts, and security professionals ... concluded that the worries of activists and so-called conspiracy theorists indeed had some basis in fact. Every single one of the electronic machines we studied was vulnerable to security problems."
Guess what? Substitute "pull-lever machine" or "paper ballot" for the phrase "electronic machine" and nothing changes. The gray elephant pull-lever machine I voted on for the last 30 years was also vulnerable to tampering.......It comes down to trusting the election judges!
The problem with Help America Vote Act was the federal government put out a 06 deadline and then dickered away most of the time before it certified what machines it would approve for federal elections. That kept states hanging, like chads, not knowing which machine to plunk their federal money on. Some scrambled to meet the deadline.
Also, most state election laws give great latitude to the local/counties, creating a hodge-podge of different systems. HAVA did nothing to address this.
Here we are less than a year from the Presidential Primary Election and we are talking about requiring VVPTrails. This is too important to rush. I would be willing to let the chips ride in '08 to get it right. Especially since TPM smoked out the GOP/DOJ strategy to fix the election via voter fraud and rigged prosecutors.
May 16, 2007 5:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Uh huh.
May 16, 2007 5:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I fail to see why there is any need to get a quick (and questionable) answer to poll results. Given that the election preceeds inauguration by months, a day matters? I say back to hand-counted paper ballots, preserved for four years, or whatever term is being filled.
More important is to outlaw any means of making results permanent when there is a challenge.
May 16, 2007 5:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Conspiracy thinking my arse! There have been discrepancies of up to 12-15 percent between exit polls and the vote as counted by these paperless touch screen machines in some of our polling places. Prior to the error of touch screen machines about a 1 1/2 percent differential was the largest recorded between exit polls and the final count. In Germany the largest differential recorded has been .05 percent. Its a lead pipe cinch that the polls have been manipulated touch screen machines and further that the damned vote altering atrocities were designed to manipulate the vote without leaving a trace of the manipulation and NO reliable way to conduct a recount.
Hear! Hear!
I'm betting any legislation this congress passes will not remove the vulnerabilities of the machines, just as every time congress has touched campaign finance reform it has made the situation worse than before the enacted a reform; this sold out duopoly’s incumbents are NOT trustworthy.
May 16, 2007 6:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
The bottom line in voter fraud is that evil exists in the hearts of those who choose to cheat. When paper ballots and punch cards were used and proven to be vulnerable because of the intense difficulty many Floridians had in punching a hole through a piece of paper, conspiracy theorists shouted, "We must start using computers to avoid a repeat of this travesty!"
Then computers replaced the simple punch cards, and now those same conspiracy buffs are complaining we should get rid of the computers and go back to the simple punch cards that even a three year old child can do (except in Florida). I imagine whatever form of balloting we use, it will be completely unacceptable as long as the loser's candidate can come up with some excuse to blame on the balloting instead of their own weakness as a candidate.
And let's not forget that the vast majority of voter fraud exists outside of the voter booth. In one instance in 2004, we had a major Independence Day celebration in downtown Denver. Some group calling themselves Move Ahead or something like that collected over 50,000 voter registration forms in that weekend. Unfortunately, only the Democrat registrations were turned in to the County Registrars Office, while all of the forms registering Independents, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, etc. were found in trash dumpsters covered with so much garbage they were ruined! In November when 20,000+ non-Democrats showed up to vote, they could not do so because they were NOT registered! This is commonplace behavior in Denver and Boulder, Colorado! Neither computers nor paper ballots can stop the hearts of those who will try and win an election at any cost. Period.
May 16, 2007 6:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
IMO, the really big problem is not outright vote fraud, but rather vote suppression-- and it takes place right out in the open, and it is (barely) legal. I sometimes think the conspiracy theories are put abroad by rightwing operatives to focus attention and efforts away from the way they are really "stealing" elections.
May 16, 2007 6:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, bravo to Rep. Holt and to what you write!
I will make sure to email his office with a strong letter of support for his efforts, ask what else concerned citizens need to do to help, and report back here on whatever his office says.
I realize some here do not want "advocacy" at this site. To my way of thinking, support for reform legislation that can help improve the integrity of our elections is a no-brainer cause which should command support from all right-thinking citizens.
Holt's efforts may well encounter partisan or special interest opposition in either the House or Senate. The best assurance for its success is if this effort becomes highly visible, such that there is a real possibility of public approbation towards any legislators who are seen as blocking urgently needed legislation.
May 17, 2007 12:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Guess what? Substitute "pull-lever machine" or "paper ballot" for the phrase "electronic machine" and nothing changes. The gray elephant pull-lever machine I voted on for the last 30 years was also vulnerable to tampering.......It comes down to trusting the election judges!
The problem is that with electronic counting, as few as one to three people would be needed to swing a statewide election; see pages 50, 62, and 78-79 of the Brennan Center report. The Brennan Center task force is the team referred to in the original post. Experts from Lawrence Livermore, Stanford, MIT, Princeton, are members of the task force.
The real possibility of a statewide election stolen by a handful of people is a new variable.
Here we are less than a year from the Presidential Primary Election and we are talking about requiring VVPTrails. This is too important to rush.
Under the bill language moving to the floor, the 27 states that required a VVPAT by November 2006 don't have to meet any deadlines by 2008. As for the remainder, Florida and Iowa are planning to implement VVPAT by 2008. New Mexico, Connecticut and North Carolina implemented major equipment changes in a matter of months, and had their new systems ready in time for the 2006 elections.
The 2008 deadline for jurisdictions that do not already have VVPAT is realistic.
I would be willing to let the chips ride in '08 to get it right. Especially since TPM smoked out the GOP/DOJ strategy to fix the election via voter fraud and rigged prosecutors.
So let's hope that TPM smokes out any voting shennanigans that might go on? Whew. The TPM crew is very impressive, and I am sure that Josh and team are flattered, but I doubt that they want the integrity of the 2008 elections to rest on their shoulders:) Let's have voter-verified paper ballots and random hand audits, and let TPM continue its current work.
May 17, 2007 4:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Voter suppression is real, and so is the vulnerability of our system of counting votes. And when voter suppression occurs, the victims know it, and can raise an outcry. If votes are switched due to computer error or malicious programming, no one knows unless paper records are checked systematically.
I sometimes think the conspiracy theories are put abroad by rightwing operatives to focus attention and efforts away from the way they are really "stealing" elections.
Metaconspiracy. Or something like that. Love it:)
May 17, 2007 4:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Re: And when voter suppression occurs, the victims know it, and can raise an outcry.
Yes, but it's also entirely too late.
And I really do think there's far more votes lost to suppression tactics than to outright vote fraud. In 2000 the focus was all on Florida's hanging chads. It should have been on thousands of people denied the right to vote because of erroneous felon lists.
May 17, 2007 7:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for some convincing responses.
I'm not prepared to roll up my sleeves and try to rebut someone who sounds well versed and possibly a pro in this arena .... perhaps even Mr. Waldman or a member of the Brennan Center Report Task Force.
If that's the case, I'm curious why you used a blogger name and didn't identify yourself when you decided to join TPM to discuss this?
That rather petty sounding comment aside, let me just explain that I have a real micro-view of how hasty federal law gets messed up on the local end.
I'm also no expert on what Carnegie Mellon Prof. Michael Shamos says about it all, but I at least know that he's not convinced that VVPT is the panacea that skeptical voters believe it to be. (I understand from my cursory view of the Brennan Center Report that it also does not view VVPT as the sole answer).
I'm curious about your opinion of Shamos? Has he commented on the report?
May 17, 2007 7:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
No one knows if their absentee ballot was counted. And many that were challenged, or tired of waiting in the rain, used provisional ballots, also prone to being uncounted.
According to Greg Palast (who sources the data) the calculated "undervote", including the above as well as ballots with no selection, matches very closely to the exit poll data for 2004. That is, adding the undervote with a weighted value (most known undervotes were Democratic) to the reported vote would yield a tally matching the exit polls.
May 17, 2007 8:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am not on the Brennan Center task force, or any kind of expert. I am just a layperson who has followed the issue closely.
Re: Shamos, he does not think a paper trail is even necessary or advisable. He is a computer scientist, but his view on voter-verified paper records is distinctly a minority one among his peers.
He has also famously bet $10,000 that a DRE touch screen voting machine cannot be hacked. Many computer scientists think he lost that bet last September, when Princeton computer scientist Edward Felten hacked a Diebold TS DRE.
May 17, 2007 8:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry to duplicate; I accidentally posted my reply down the thread.
I am not on the Brennan Center task force, or any kind of expert. I am just a layperson who has followed the issue closely.
Re: Shamos, he does not think a paper trail is even necessary or advisable. He is a computer scientist, but his view on voter-verified paper records is distinctly a minority one among his peers.
He has also famously bet $10,000 that a DRE touch screen voting machine cannot be hacked. Many computer scientists think he lost that bet last September, when Princeton computer scientist Edward Felten hacked a Diebold TS DRE.
May 17, 2007 8:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks. ... Now that your on board I hope you contribute more.
May 18, 2007 5:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Reporting back.
I received a standard email reply from Holt's office saying that, since I do not live in the district he represents, I need to contact my own US rep. Evidently, their operating assumption seems to be that "non-residents" contacting Holt's office with concerns extending to those of us who live outside of, as well as inside, the Congressman's district, are not worthy of a substantive reply.
I tried emailing his campaign office, very likely not exactly in high-gear mode at the moment. No reply.
I've emailed tpm management with a suggestion they give a high profile to Holt's (and, I should have added, other un- or under-reported but important legislative election reform initiatives) initiative. I'd like to see those blocking reform suitably ridiculed. I've not come across anyone better at doing that, so far, than Josh.
May 30, 2007 1:01 AM | Reply | Permalink