To the ACM: why paperless DRE voting is unnecessary and perilous

["Pete Klammer" <pklammer@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

The stampede to replace natural ballots -- (physical artifacts) with
synthetic ballots (artificial electronic reconstructions) is driven by an
unwarranted submission to commercial imperatives.  Like artificial in-vitro
fertilization, direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting is a suitable
special method for a rare few with special needs.  But paperless DRE voting
is being foisted upon an unwitting majority for whom the benefits do not
justify the risks, by a perfect-storm collusion of congressional good
intentions (the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA) and a perennially
cash-hungry industry (voting-equipment vendors).  

What appears to be keeping this stampede whipped up is the chimerical
illusion, on the part of the disabled in particular, that depersonalized
programmable electronics will somehow result in fairer elections.  What
these advocates fail to appreciate is that they are not alone in the voting
booth with their ballot: rather, with DREs they are separated from their
ballot by the interceding works of programmers, installers, maintainers,
marketers -- a whole chain of design, development, and deployment -- any one
of which could be at interest in unfaithful ballot results.  Were I blind, I
would much rather have the assistance of someone familiar than all these
strangers.

I wouldn't mind so much if the disabled could voluntarily choose such
indirect voting: if they chose to delegate their count to unseen machinery,
so be it.  But widespread general application of DREs saddles us all with
these intercessors involuntarily, effectively making us all equally blinded.

As bad as the direct consequences of paperless voting are -- certainly
contested miscounts, and probably unprovable manipulation -- the indirect
consequences are more serious and insidious.  The mere insistence of a
document-free, non-evidentiary process, feeds a paranoid distrust of the
election system itself.  "Why else would the powers that be so perversely
proscribe immutable paper tokens in favor of infinitely-morphable electronic
images?" one asks.  The rationalization and excuses are insufficient to
engender trust and confidence in what should and must be the bedrock of our
democracy; turnout must suffer.

There is nothing inherently safer or fairer about electronic voting.  In
fact, it imposes an entirely unnecessary layer of obfuscation between the
citizen and the election.  The several proposed cryptographical solutions
merely add more layers of inscrutability.  For what?

There will never be a substitute for vigilance and participation in
elections and all their attendant processes.  No amount of gadgetry,
electronic or otherwise, will alleviate the need to witness, audit, and
challenge an inherently adversarial activity.  Our greatest challenge now is
to defend the principle of "one person, one vote" by opposing the
opportunities for indirection, confusion and trickery, by keeping the
process as clear, transparent, and simple as possible.  Nothing I have heard
in this debate justifies departure from pure paper ballots.

 --
Pete Klammer / ACM(1970), IEEE, ICCP(CCP), NSPE(PE), NACSE(NSNE)
    3200 Routt Street / Wheat Ridge, Colorado 80033-5452
  (303)233-9485 / Fax:(303)274-6182 / Mailto:PKlammer@xxxxxxx
 Idealism may not win every contest, but that's not what I choose it for!