January 17, 2004
Demand a paper trail!
Last week's special election in South Florida has pumped up a growing debate over whether touch screen voting machines need a backup paper trail.The House district race in Broward and Palm Beach counties was decided by 12 votes, but 137 people cast ballots without voting for anyone.
Since all but the absentee votes were electronic, a traditional manual recount was impossible. The only paper that could be produced was printouts of the electronic ballots.
That prompted Palm Beach County commissioners to ask the state for the authority to retrofit touch screen voting machines at a cost of $2.2-million so they produce paper ballots that voters can place in locked boxes for use in a manual recount. Palm Beach is one of 15 Florida counties with touch screen machines, including Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco.
U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler of Palm Beach this week urged Gov. Jeb Bush to push for paper ballots to ensure that "another national election debacle does not occur."
This is exactly what needs to be done. A voter will vote on the touch screen, receive a paper receipt showing the candidates she voted for, and if everything is correct, the voter will then deposit the printed receipt into a traditional ballot box. Easy to read, no hanging chads, these receipts would provide a trusted and verifiable way to recount a close election.
As things stand now, a recount consists of the machines re-tabulating the same numbers tabulated originally. There is no way to check the accuracy of the vote as it was originally recorded.
As a computer guy, I know that right now the only way to ensure that your vote is being counted the way you want it to be is to vote absentee, the old-fashioned way, on a piece of paper. Touch screens get out of kilter, and could record a vote for the wrong candidate. Many questions have been raised regarding the lack of security in these systems, which claim to be proprietary and secret, but which seem to use a simple and easy to hack Excel spreadsheet for tracking votes.
The history of elections in America is rife with cheating and fraud. It is too easy to “fix” these electronic voting machines and skew the results. Without a paper trail no one would ever be able to find out that an election was stolen.
To request an absentee ballot for every election this year from the Hillsborough Supervisor of Elections, click here. If you reside in another Florida county, click here and follow the links to your county Supervisor of Elections.
Remember: in Florida, it is legal to vote absentee even if you are not out of town. Read the simple rules, request an absentee ballot, and make sure your vote counts.
Posted by Norwood at January 17, 2004 09:22 AM