Great Orange State editorial on voter-verified paper ballots

This op-ed piece appeared in teh Nashville Tennessean today, and is reprinted here in its entirety with the permission of the authors. Our Gathering To Save Our Democracy group is working hard on VVPB, battling the forces of evil (a never-ending task in this land of the Smirking Chimp). Enjoy and comment on this latest salvo in our effort to save this country. Peace out. Fly by Night (BOP # 16502-075)
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Nashville Eye: To be sure your vote counts, push for paper backup ballots

By PHIL SCHOGGEN
and DANA PRIDE

Remember the nightmare of the 2000 presidential election — punch cards held to the light to decipher voters' intentions? America clearly had a voting equipment problem.

It wasn't the only problem, however. Persons with disabilities — about one of every five persons — long frustrated by voting machines they couldn't operate, wanted changes that would allow them to vote independently and privately, as do other citizens.


So Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002 with major funding available to help states meet its requirements.

Voters must be able to vote independently and privately, to review and change their votes before they are cast. Every polling place must have at least one voting system accessible to persons with disabilities, and every voting system must use or produce a paper record that can be manually audited.

Manufacturers improved electronic voting machines — voters simply touched designated spots on a screen, but problems emerged. Like any computer, electronic voting machines may experience software errors, viruses and other hardware malfunctions. Sometimes, these machines showed more votes than there were registered voters. Large discrepancies between exit polls and election results were found.

In its 2005 report to Congress, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) stated that ballots cast could be modified electronically.

Many of the new touch-screen machines can produce a paper tape showing exactly what was recorded in the electronics but not seen by the voter. The electronic tally is subject to malfunction or to manipulation by persons with particular agenda. So that printout provides no way to check the vote for accuracy.

This lack of an independent check of the votes is the main concern. As one computer expert said before the Carter-Baker Commission in 2005. "No one can scrutinize critical processes of the election, such as the collection of ballots and counting of votes, because those processes occur invisibly in electronic circuits.

"Voters have no means to confirm that the machines have recorded their votes correctly."

An alternative is a voter-verified paper ballot (VVPB), seen by the voter, marked manually (or with a ballot marking device) and verified before the vote is cast. An optical scan machine reads and tabulates the paper ballots as marked by the voter, then deposits the ballots in a locked box beneath the machine. The ballots can be hand counted if a recount is needed. A VVPB is not subject to electronic malfunction or manipulation and is the official ballot of record if the hand counted vote differs from the electronic tally.

Only when voters have full confidence that their votes are accurately reflected in the final count will our democracy be secure.

The health of our democracy requires the restoration of public confidence in our election system; clearly VVPB machines greatly aid this effort.

More than half the states have already passed legislation requiring voting machines that use or produce VVPBs. Similar bipartisan-supported bills have been introduced in our own state legislature, and measures before Congress would require all states to adopt VVPBs.

In the next few weeks, Tennessee counties will spend their HAVA allocation of $55 million to buy new machines. It will be an unforgivable waste of taxpayer money to buy machines that do not meet the new VVPB standards — as now seems likely — and have to spend millions later replacing those machines if VVPBs become mandated by state or federal law.

Voting is the life-blood of a viable democracy. Act now to ensure that your vote counts. Call your legislators or election officials and tell them you want voter-verified paper ballots in your precinct the next time you vote. •

Phil Schoggen of Nashville, a professor emeritus at Cornell University, also taught at the former Peabody College for Teachers. Dana Pride, also of Nashville, covered education for the Nashville Banner.

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:hi: :hi: :hi:

to the original article for those that collect articles for the e-voting scrapbook!

Nashville Eye: To be sure your vote counts, push for paper backup ballots

Pray for hand counting.

I saw "Orange State" and was worried that this was about Florida.
Jeb et al made it a law that paper ballots can't be counted by hand if a machine counted them first, making any paper trail irrelevant.

But I know the author was trying to reach people who have never even thought about it before, and a stronger dose of the truth (say, about the Hursti demonstrations in FL and CA proving the easy hackability of them) might scare off some folks. Still I think simple facts like that, or the huge numbers of "glitches" reported in 2004 (no need to state they were probably intentional), or the number of states already outlawing the machines, might be good.