VOTER-VERIFIED PAPER BALLOTS
A SOLUTION IN SEARCH OF A PROBLEM

Vol. 11, No. 3 - 2003 13
by Jim Dickson

Voter-verified paper ballots are not only unnecessary, they constitute a major threat to the modernization of the nation's obsolete voting system. Cal Tech and MIT report that in 2000 roughly two million Americans went to the polls, voted and left believing that their ballots were going to be counted. These voters had their votes taken away because of the high rates of error inherent in punch-card, lever and optical-scan machines. Touch-screen systems are proven to have the lowest error rate. Electronic voting on touch-screen machines has been in use for 40 years. Not one election in four decades has been spoiled by the use of direct recording electronic (DRE) machines. In the same time period, scores of elections have been damaged by the use of paper voting.

Every election system is imperfect; every method of voting is subject to malicious attack or inadvertent damage. The question is: what is the probability of such an accidental or malicious deed? Elections are layered with human safeguards, procedural protections, as well as modern hardware and software systems. If we trust our work, finances and safety to computers every day, we should be able to do the same with our elections.

Running an election is like flying an airplane. There are computers on board with back-up systems, but there is also a captain and co-pilot. On-board computers, like the computers used for elections, are not accessible to just anyone. Before a city or county can buy a machine, it must go through vigorous testing and certification, first at the federal level and then at the state level. The machine manufacturers do not design the ballot or program the machine; both are the responsibility of the local city or county officials. Once the machines are programmed for a specific election, they are stored in secure facilities with tamper-evident locks and seals and are only distributed to the polling places the day before the election. On Election Day, each machine is opened and initialized in the presence of poll workers and judges (in most states, four individuals in each polling place). Each machine is checked to confirm that there are no votes registered on it. The machines and the programs that run them, including the tabulating software, are not accessible from the Internet. If a rogue programmer wanted to steal an election, he would have to gain access to hundreds of thousands of machines one at a time.

DREs are the only voting systems that offer millions of disabled Americans the ability to cast a secret, independent and verifiable vote by reading the ballot via earphones for the voter. I am blind, and I have never cast a secret ballot. According to the census there are 11.5 million Americans who, because of blindness or hand-arm disabilities, have had to use third-party assistance. After the 2000 election many Americans, for the first time, asked themselves, "was my ballot marked properly?" Those of us with disabilities ask ourselves this question every time we vote. Audio ballots are also important to citizens who speak minority languages. Like my grandparents, millions of immigrants become citizens. They often leave their countries of origin without acquiring reading proficiency in their native languages. Millions of other American citizens have limited reading ability, and they will be able to listen to the ballot and vote without embarrassment or insecurity. There are four manufacturers whose DRE machines are accessible to the disabled: Diebold, Sequoia Pacific, Hart Intercivic and Elections Systems and Software. None of these offer a voter-verified paper ballot. As a matter of fact, there is no voter-verifiable paper ballot machine on the market that has been certified at the national level. A touch-screen system that offers an accessible voter-verified ballot has never been used in an actual election.

Introducing a new voting technology to market takes years. After a new system is designed, it must be tested: Will the machines run flawlessly for 12 hours? Are they easy to set up and operate? After these types of questions have been satisfactorily answered, the machines are given realworld trials in a number of elections with small turn-outs, such as school board or county commissioner elections. Once the machines are proven to work flawlessly, they can be used in a primary election with the general election to follow. Often a county or a city will first deploy the new system in only part of its jurisdiction. The public and poll workers must be taught, in advance of Election Day, how to use the new equipment. Years of running elections and testing new voting systems have taught us that new systems must be introduced slowly, deliberately and incrementally. There has never been a new voting technology brought to market in less than four years. If we go to paper, then the two million Americans who thought they had voted but did not get their vote counted in 2000 will not have their vote counted in 2004, 2006 or even 2008.

Jim Dickson is Vice President for Governmental Affairs of
the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD).
He leads the AAPD Disability Vote Project, a broad coalition
of 36 national disability-related organizations.

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