August 27, 2004

E-voting machines have long record of glitches

In that article, Danny Cline, salesman for a firm which markets iVotronic, is quoted as saying, "This equipment has been manufactured for 15 years and we haven't lost a vote yet."

That's just not true. iVotronic computers--the same iVotronic computers which Marion County's commissioners have just paid more than $100,000 to lease -- have lost votes in elections over and over.

In Wake County, N.C., iVotronic voting computers lost 436 votes, and the company itself admitted that their machines -- not inexperienced pollworkers or untrained voters -- were to blame. Wake County decided not to use iVotronic computers for future electi ons.

In Miami, which also used iVotronic computers, hundreds of votes went missing in the Democratic primary. Several precincts with thousands of voters reported only a few votes, although voters had been turning out steadily all day. That was finally traced to a problem with iVotronic's hardware.

And these aren't the only such instances; they're just the largest and the best-known. The Miami incident made the national news. It's surprising that Cline is unaware of it. Cline is also reported as saying, "As for a paper ballot printout, it wasn't an issue until the federal government raised the question."

Actually, computer scientists and other computer-literate people, those who understand how computers work and how vulnerable any computer is to error, have been calling for paper receipts for voting computers for years now. With voting computers, a back-up voting system of some sort is the only way to detect error or fraud. In the Wake County incident mentioned above, the 436 unrecorded votes were spotted only because the county was testing the computers by also using optical scanners.

If the county must use voting computers at all (optical scanners are both cheaper and more accurate), then the simplest and easiest way to provide a voter-verifiable backup system is to give each voter a printed receipt, just as any ATM machine does now. That way voters can check their receipts to make sure their votes have been recorded accurately, and drop them in the ballot box on their way out. Then, if any question arises about the computers' tally, there will be a physical record of voters' votes.

In light of the fact that iVotronic computers do not give paper receipts, it is particularly regrettable that Marion County's commissioners have decided to enter into a lease which provides substantial financial incentives for buying iVotronic computers in future. A state legislative subcommittee is currently considering requiring voting computers to give paper receipts, and if it does so then Marion County will be unable to use those incentives and will end up paying the full $100,000 for this fall's lease.

Meredith Dixon

Mannington