Proposed legislation crucial for an accurate election tally

If the next presidential election were held today, one quarter of all registered voters would be forced to vote on paperless voting machines. These machines, known as DREs (for direct record electronic), are voting machines that record a vote directly to computer memory. If the machines crash or malfunction, those votes would be lost. A hack attack on those DREs most likely would not be detected. Even if the manipulation were exposed, there’d be no way to reconstruct the true intent of those voters.

Votes cast on a paperless voting machine can’t be recounted or checked in any meaningful way.

A federal bill, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007 (HR 811), would correct the problem in time for the 2008 presidential election. It calls for voter verified paper ballots and mandatory audits of voting machines. A House committee has already approved the Voter Confidence Act, and it is ready to go to the floor for a vote by the full House of Representatives. A bipartisan majority of 222 House members have co-signed the bill.

In Maine, an incident in Waterville in the 2006 election illustrates the need for paper ballots and audits. While there were only 16,000 registered voters, the vote tally showed 27,000 votes. Luckily, the votes had been cast on paper ballots, which could be recounted. Egregious errors such as these are usually picked up by alert election officials. But without a robust audit program, we don’t know how many other errors occur without being caught and corrected.

If The Voter Confidence Act becomes law, Maine will have to provide random audits and, by 2010, will have to modify or replace equipment used for disabled accessibility. The bill calls for $1 billion of funding to help states make the upgrades.

Why should there be a federal bill mandating these changes? It’s a question of fairness. Should voters in one state be stuck voting on machines that can’t be checked or recounted when voters in another state have the assurance of knowing their votes were counted accurately? Common Cause, the organization I represent, is nonpartisan; we don’t have an opinion about which candidate should win. But we do care that elections are run fairly and accurately. The voters’ intentions are what are important.

If Congress doesn’t act soon, 25 percent of votes cast in the presidential election next year will be at risk of being lost or hacked because those voters will be using paperless voting machines. If we are forced to face another problematic election in 2008, too many voters across the U.S. will permanently lose faith in the democratic process.

It’s no surprise that some election officials oppose the Voter Confidence Act. They rightly interpret it as a criticism of the way they’ve conducted their duties. But it’s time to get beyond defensiveness and the casting of blame. The fact is, the voting machinery used in a third of the states by a quarter of registered voters isn’t up to the standards of accuracy and security demanded by the voting process.

Election officials say there’s not enough time to correct this situation by November 2008. But four states have made this change in nine months or less. In Florida, one of our largest states, the Republican legislature and governor have determined that they can do it by 2008. How ironic – and hopeful – to point to Florida as the poster child for election reform. Their endorsement of the need for paper ballots and audits proves that the question isn’t, “How can we make the necessary changes in time?” The question is, “How can we NOT make the changes?”

In order to meet the 2008 deadline, we urge Maine’s U.S. Reps. Tom Allen and Mike Michaud to help pass the Voter Confidence Act now.

Jon Bartholomew is a member of Common Cause Maine.