The machine ate my vote

by David Batstone
About 30 percent of the electorate - 50 million voters or so - will submit a ballot in the coming November elections using paperless machines. Be worried. The e-voting system in place is dangerously vulnerable to fraud.

In North Carolina's 2002 general election, six touch-screen machines malfunctioned and deleted 436 electronic ballots. In a post-election investigation, the manufacturer determined that the machines erroneously had stopped counting votes even while the polls were still open.

In a January 2004 special election for a House seat in Florida, paperless voting terminals recorded 134 cast ballots as blank. The race ended up being decided by a margin of 12 votes. Left without a printed record, election officials could not recapture how voters intended to choose, and the results stood.

Beyond unresolved technical problems, the people behind the machines do not provide comfort. The two dominant makers of voting machines have tainted themselves with close ties to GOP candidates. For example, last year the CEO of industry-leader Diebold Elections Systems, Walden O'Dell, wrote a donor-ask letter to wealthy Republicans announcing that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president" in 2004. At the time of the letter's delivery, Diebold was making a bid to the state of Ohio to become its supplier of touch-screen machines.

One does not have to be swimming in a sea of conspiracy theories to recognize the danger of voter fraud. Absent a paper record of cast ballots and with software that - according to respected computer scientists - is very hackable, fixing an election might pass without detection.

The e-voting industry considers these critiques as typical anxiety that accompanies technical innovation. Trust us, they say. But their interests, as well as the democratic process, would be better served by coming up with a system of accountability that might actually give us reason to trust the technology.

This past summer The New York Times sent journalists to investigate how the Nevada Gaming Control Board ensures that electronic gambling machines in Las Vegas operate honestly and accurately. Their findings: Protocols put in place on the Las Vegas Strip are much more stringent than those required for e-voting. "Electronic voting, by comparison [to monitoring of gambling machines], is rife with lax procedures, security risks, and conflicts of interest," conclude the editors of the Times.

It's troubling to think that we can walk into a casino with more confidence than we can approach the ballot box.

Excerpted from the September 2004 issue of Sojourners.

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