Reply #55: Considering Computer Voting | NY Times 12/15/03

[Stephanie]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/technology/15neco.html?8hpib
Considering Computer Voting
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: December 15, 2003
Gaithersburg, Md.

HIGH-TECH voting is getting a low-tech backstop: paper. Most new voting machines are basically computers with touch screens instead of keyboards. Their makers promise that the new machines will simplify voting and forever end the prospect of pregnant and hanging chads. But as the market for computerized voting equipment has intensified, a band of critics has emerged, ranging from the analytical to the apoplectic.

The opponents of the current machines, along with the people who make them and election officials who buy them, gathered to spar in Gaithersburg, a Washington suburb, last Wednesday and Thursday, at a symposium optimistically titled, "Building Trust and Confidence in Voting Systems."

The critics complained that the companies were putting democracy into a mystery box, and that the computer code for the systems was not written to standards that ensure security. Critics are uneasy about the major vendors' political ties, and they worry about what a malevolent insider or a hacker could do to an election. But above all, they complain that few of the new machines allow voters to verify their votes, whether with a paper receipt or another method, an idea favored by computer scientists including David L. Dill of Stanford University.

The companies generally respond that the lever-style, mechanical voting machines offer no such backup, either. The critics counter that the computerized systems are the first to need voter verification methods.

Now a growing number of election officials and politicians seem to be agreeing with the skeptics. Last week, Nevada said it was buying voting machines for the entire state, and it demanded paper receipts for all voters. Nevada Secretary of State Dean Heller said he received an overwhelming message from voters that they did not trust electronic voting. "Frankly, they think the process is working against them, rather than working for them," Mr. Heller, a Republican, said. Last month, the California secretary of state, Kevin Shelley said that his state would require all touch-screen voting machines to provide a "voter-verified paper audit trail." <much more>