THE PRICE OF GAS / ELECTRONIC VOTING
Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting systems continue to elicit passionate debate among LWV members. The 2004 LWVUS national policy endorses voting systems that are secure, accurate, recountable and accessible (SARA), a policy arrived at as a compromise between proponents and foes who insist that a Voter Verified Paper Ballot (VVPB) is necessary.
What are the advantages of touch screen electronic voting? Briefly, they allow "second chance" voting, they provide quick accurate counts, they eliminate overvotes if a voter marks two votes in a single race, they enfranchise voters with disabilities to truly vote privately, they can accommodate multiple languages, and they are highly accepted by voters of all ages, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. After all, when was the last time your ATM made a mistake?
However, opponents have raised compelling questions. Initial concerns that hacking or other manipulation of votes through the internet have been dispelled with the use of stand alone machines, and recent elections have demonstrated that virtually all problems were user, not machine errors. However, critics contend that a "Trojan Horse" computer code or chip could activate on Election Day and compromise results. As a result of these concerns, new and retrofitted old machines contain additional safeguards, including the ability to print out paper results at random times during the election process. So there is a paper trail in place for all DRE system, but this differs from a VVPB that would print a voting record for each voter, a record that could also be used for a manual recount.
At present the technology to provide a VVPB in a practical manner is not inherent in any machine. But would this solve the problem? Anyone clever enough to hack into the new machines could certainly manipulate a printer. In addition, printers are the least reliable component of the DRE systems and thousands of voters are likely to be disenfranchised by malfunctioning printers. Finally, the manual recounting of paper ballots would unacceptably delay results. Should DRE systems be abandoned, or should we continue to question this technology--and listen to the answers? And the price of gas? Do you always ask for a receipt or do you trust the gas company's DRE system?
Given that the directions to the Convention delegates included many impassioned concerns about DREs, we will continue to provide information on this issue.
--Convention Delegate
