Officials warn against rush to back up electronic ballots

[tom bldr <tom_bldr@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/articles/2004/05/06/officials_warn_against_rush_to_back_up_electronic_ballots/

Officials warn against rush to back up electronic
ballots
Say adding paper would cause chaos

By Hope Yen, Associated Press  |  May 6, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Retrofitting electronic voting machines
with paper receipts in time for this year's
presidential election would cause chaos far worse than
the security concerns it is intended to address,
election officials said yesterday in the first hearing
of the federal Election Assistance Commission.

The receipts have been sought as a backstop against
computer errors, crashes, or tampering. The seven-hour
hearing -- the first of the new commission, formed in
the wake of the controversy over the presidential
recount in 2000 -- brought together computer
specialists, election officials, and advocacy groups
to begin work on a national policy on electronic
voting security.

Waving a 37-inch-long receipt that would be needed for
each voter on a complicated ballot, Los Angeles
election chief Conny McCormack said making voters pore
over the cryptic printout with small type would
guarantee confusion. ''Touch screens have a proven
track record of doing the best job," she said.
''Voters are confident in these systems. There's only
a tiny, vocal minority making false claims to the
contrary."

California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, however,
disputed McCormack's claim, saying he followed the
unanimous recommendation of his policy panel when he
decertified touch-screen equipment last week. ''I
would not base my decision on the false claims of a
tiny minority," he said.

Congress is also considering several proposals,
including one by Representative Rush Holt, Democrat of
New Jersey, that would mandate paper receipts for
electronic machines in this November's election. Holt
appeared outside the hearing, joined by supporters
from TrueMajority, Common Cause, and TrueVoteMD, which
are demanding the paper receipts, and said pressure
from such grass-roots groups is giving momentum to
reforms. Paper receipts, he said, ''could be ready for
this year's election."

Shelley urged the commission to join him in
immediately setting standards for the paper printouts.
The commissioners have focused on procedures designed
to avoid the kind of chaos that occurred in Florida
four years ago, but said before the hearing they had
no intention of trying to move as quickly as Shelley
urged.

Civic groups split over paper printouts. Common Cause
and the National Coalition on Black Civic
Participation testified in favor of receipts to
restore confidence in elections. But the National
Council of La Raza, the League of Women Voters, and
the American Association of People With Disabilities
all said that electronic voting reduces voter error
and helps the disabled and people who don't speak
English. Adding the unproven and relatively untested
paper receipts could drive away such groups, they
said.

Commissioners expressed concerns about the
behind-the-scenes power of equipment vendors.

Chairman DeForest ''Buster" Soaries Jr. noted that the
chief executive officer of Diebold Election Systems, a
major provider of election equipment, had pledged in a
Republican fund-raising letter last year that he was
''committed" to delivering Ohio's electoral votes to
President Bush.

Spokesmen for the companies and many election
officials said there are enough checks and balances in
the current system. 


	
		
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