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Gambling With Democracy By Larry S. Gibson and John Hardin Young Maryland has paid $55.6 million for a touch-screen voting system that is vulnerable to hacking, "ballot box" stuffing, and other forms of sabotage, according to two independent studies. Is that cause for alarm? You wouldn't know it from the way state election officials have been talking. After Super Tuesday's vote, the officials declared the debut of the AccuVote-TS machines, purchased from Diebold Inc., a success. Indeed, administrators are to be commended for running a largely trouble-free primary. Yet the chorus of electronic voting's critics has been growing for valid reasons. First, a Johns Hopkins University analysis of Diebold software found profound weaknesses in the code's security and suggested several ways troublemakers could botch an election. Then, a state-funded study confirmed many of those findings. In January, another security consultant hired by the state told the General Assembly that Maryland is safer buying a book from Amazon than transmitting election results via the new system. Thankfully, state lawmakers are considering legislation that would require the machines to print a paper record of electronically cast ballots. The confirmation would give voters confidence their votes had been recorded correctly, and would provide a paper trail that could be consulted if problems with the computers arose. State legislators should pass this bill. Maryland election officials have insisted that a paper trail is unnecessary and impractical. Their chief argument is that no federal standards exist for printing systems. Secondly, printers can break down, causing problems for poll workers and threatening voter confidence. Lastly, adding printers to this already expensive system would cost the state money. Given what's at stake--trust in fair elections--the public should not let the government off the hook with such weak excuses for inaction. Maryland does not need to wait for the federal government to create standards for printing. California hasn't. That state is requiring that, by 2006, all its voting machines, also made by Diebold, print records of ballots cast. What's more, federal standards cannot ensure sound elections. We have standards for voting machines, but those regulations haven't saved many elections that relied on computerized devices from arousing widespread distrust. Which brings us to the second argument. Yes, printers can break down. What's worse is that so can touch-screen voting machines. We needn't look far for evidence of this: * In January, a GOP committee report declared that the November debut of touch-screen voting in Fairfax County, Va., was "a failure," after at least 10 machines crashed and a tight school board election fell into dispute. * In Broward County, Fla., touch-screen machines failed to record the votes of 134 people in a January state legislative election decided by 12 votes. * Last November, machines in Indiana tabulated 144,000 votes in a district with only 19,000 voters. If computer glitches were the only risks, we would be lucky. Computer security experts say the Diebold system could allow people to vote multiple times or disrupt tallies, and hackers could break into the state computer system and change an election's outcome. If someone tries to interfere with a future election, or if machines malfunction, results will likely be contested. Without some kind of paper backup, confidence in elections will erode, which is precisely what the country doesn't need. The third argument against a paper trail -- it will cost the state money -- acknowledges a likely reality. But skimping today amounts to an unconscionable gamble with democracy. Now is not the time to become overly confident in a questionable voting system. The 2000 presidential election gave us a new perspective on the American electoral process. The greatest democracy in history had a dirty secret: the right to vote was being mismanaged. Afterward, the public rightly demanded a more trustworthy way of tabulating votes. We are on the verge of great improvements, but can anyone claim the technology is infallible? The legislature should insist on a paper trail now. The public deserves a voting system it can trust. Larry S. Gibson is an attorney with Shapiro Sher Guinot & Sandler and teaches election law and other subjects at the University of Maryland School of Law. John Hardin Young, a partner with Sandler, Reiff & Young, a firm affiliated with Shapiro Sher Guinot & Sandler, was the lead recount attorney in Florida for Vice President Gore. |