The Unkept Promise on Voting
Published: May 16, 2007
Congress has done a terrible job of regulating electronic voting: It allowed A.T.M.-style voting machines to proliferate without requiring them to produce a paper trail that can be audited to ensure that the results are accurate. That has meant wasted time and money for the states, confusion for voters, and questionable election results. Fortunately, the nation’s delinquent lawmakers have a chance to set things right — through a bill introduced by Representative Rush Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, that would finally impose a paper trail requirement. There are some details that need fine-tuning, but Congress should move quickly to pass it.
After the 2000 election debacle, Congress gave the states large grants to replace faulty voting machines, including the kind that produced hanging chads. But in too many cases, states and localities rushed to buy electronic voting machines that do not produce paper records. Voters have to trust the numbers they spit out on election night, but the numbers cannot be independently verified, and that is unacceptable.
Aside from intentional vote theft — which is not hard to do on paperless electronic voting machines — glitches are all too common in these machines. A disturbing one that keeps occurring is “vote flipping,” in which machines record a vote for one candidate as a vote for his or her opponent.
While Congress looked the other way, many states responded to popular demand and imposed their own paper trail requirements. More than half, including such large ones as California, New York and Ohio, have adopted this critical reform. But some still have not, which means that a presidential election could be decided by votes cast on paperless electronic voting machines....
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/opinion/16wed1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
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