Tuesday, December 30, 2003
Officials are addressing security issues discovered during a statewide review.
CLEVELAND (AP) -- A slip of paper is creating a debate in the state over electronic voting machines.
The debate concerns whether voters should be allowed to see a printout receipt of their ballot before it is cast.
The receipt -- called a voter-verified audit trail -- would then be placed in a locked ballot box that could be physically counted if results are in dispute.
David Dill, professor of computer science at Stanford University, said receipts are the key to fair elections in the electronic age.
"Since there is no way to make sure that the computers are honest or that they're error-free, we can't be trusting any computer count that can't be independently verified," Dill said.
The replacement of punch-card and lever voting machines with electronic voting machines was laid out under the Help America Vote Act that followed the disputed Bush-Gore presidential contest of 2000.
U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Toledo, said many of her constituents are skeptical about the electronic machines.
Kaptur and a fellow Toledo Democrat, state Sen. Teresa Fedor, are backing a bill to mandate a verified paper trail in Ohio.
Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell has not taken a position on paper receipts, spokesman Carlo LoParo said.
Security issues
Blackwell has halted the sale of electronic voting machines to county elections boards while security issues discovered during a statewide review are addressed.
He has assured that machines certified for sale in Ohio comply with the Help America Vote Act, which requires that a paper backup of each ballot cast be printed after the polls have closed.
LoParo said no machine certified for use in Ohio is equipped to produce a receipt for each voter. He said the machines' manufacturers could install such a system, but it would increase the cost by up to 25 percent.
Blackwell believes optical-scan machines could be used as an alternative. Voters fill out a ballot card by hand and insert them in optical-scan machines, which read pencil marks next to their selections and automatically tabulate results.
The machines are designed to eliminate overvotes for the same office that punch-card and lever systems don't always catch. They can be designed to refuse to accept ballots with errors and allow voters to recast them.
But Lloyd Leonard, national advocacy director for the League of Women Voters, said any kind of paper system has risks.
"If there is a moral to the Florida story from 2000, it's that paper ballots are insecure and unreliable," Leonard said. "So it seems strange to us to want to enshrine a paper ballot system."
Leonard said paper receipts would cause chaos at polling places and disenfranchise those with visual or language barriers, such as those who are illiterate or non-English speaking.
Barbara Pierce, president of the Federation of the Blind of Ohio, said the blind had been promised they would at last be able to vote without help on electronic machines, an advance that could be undermined by paper-receipt requirements.