Houston paper sees the light, wants paper.
Ballot backstop
Houston Chronicle editorial
In in an electronic age haunted by computer viruses and hackers, many people cling to paper security blankets, whether they come in the form of ATM receipts, itemized credit card charges or monthly bank statements.
Yet in the essential civic exercise of choosing our representatives, Texans who use electronic machines are forced to trust a fallible computer program with no way to check the accuracy of the results. Such a system amounts to faith-based voting.
Always happy to see people grasping what we have been saying for slmost four years.
With the knowledge that no computer is tamperproof and a growing list of malfunctions by direct recording electronic machines (DREs) during elections, 27 states have enacted laws requiring voting systems that produce paper ballots that voters can verify (VVPBs). After individuals make their selections and cast their vote electronically, a hard copy of the ballot is printed showing the selections. The voter views the results to make sure their vote is accurate, and then drops the ballot into a sealed box, providing a record independent of the electronic machine that can later be audited.
Texas, unfortunately, has no such requirement, and Harris County, which uses the Hart Intercivic machine and also conducts municipal elections, has no plans to purchase the company's optional printer system to create a paper trail. County Democratic Party officials are clamoring for such a system, as well as increased security and voting machine tests for accuracy.
“If folks can hack the Pentagon,” Harris County Democratic Chairman Gerry Birnberg said, “they can certainly hack a machine in Harris County.”
Again, I would like to point out that the greatest threat from these machines is the fact that the software is so poorly written, failure is inevitable.
County Clerk Beverly Kaufman, a Republican, says such concerns are unfounded. “There's this kind of cavalier attitude on these folks' part that all you've got to do is just bolt on a printer and there it is,” said Kaufman, who estimates that it would cost up to $8 million to buy equipment and reprogram the system with the capability to print ballots in three languages. “We're just not at a point here where we're able to do it if we wanted to, which we don't.”
No, the cavalier attitude comes from folks like you who insist on faith in a system that has been repeatedly shown to be unreliable and inaccurate. Also, you were warned about these problems LONG before you bought these systems. You chose to listen to the vendors rather than the voters, so if more money is required, look in the mirror for someone to blame.
Kaufman also contends that the current system has the capability to produce a paper copy of results after the election is concluded. However, whatever would be printed out would simply reflect what the system recorded and would not detect computer malfunctions, erased votes or fraudulent manipulation of programming.
In a report this year on electronic voting machines entitled “Malfunction and Malfeasance,” researchers for the nonpartisan group Common Cause concluded that DRE machines “are vulnerable to malfunction and also to tampering in which a computer-savvy hacker with minimal access to the machine could introduce malicious code to the DRE software and change the results of an election.”
The report cites an incident during this spring's Texas primary in which voting machines in Tarrant County, which uses the same system as Harris, recorded 100,000 votes that were never cast. Hart Intercivic officials took responsibility for the programming mistake that caused the overcount but discounted the incident because votes for all candidates were boosted equally.
The software FAILED. It failed in a spectacular fashion, which was good. Next time it can fail in a subtle fashion which will be harder to detect, but will thwart the will of the voters all the same.
Last year the Commission on Federal Election Reform led by former Secretary of State James Baker, a Republican, and former President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, issued election reform recommendations that included a call for a federal law requiring all electronic voting systems to be equipped with paper printouts. Legislation died in the last session of Congress but has been reintroduced by Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J. A similar bill, the Voter Integrity and Verification Act, has been introduced in the Senate by Republican John Ensign of Nevada.
Since Texas has yet to approve paper trails that voters can verify, it is not Kaufman's responsibility to make that decision. The Texas Legislature and Congress should pass legislation mandating the installation of paper audits on all electronic voting machines.
They are more expensive and might create more work for election officials, but VVPBs are necessary to boost voter confidence in system and give candidates recourse to recounts.
Again, if you had listened to us in the first place, you wouldn't have wasted money. [Black Box Voting]
