Do you vote? If so, did it count?

Delaware Coast Press / Wednesday, December 6, 2006

http://www.delmarvanow.com/deweybeach/stories/20061206/2352247.html

Getting nervous about electronic voting machines: It's not just for paranoiacs anymore.

In a development that bodes badly for the integrity of elections in Delaware, the federal government said last week that electronic ballot machines, including the kind Delaware and several other states use, can't be vetted as free of programming flaws that could alter an election's true outcome. The National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, said machines that tally up votes in computer software without also creating paper records of individual votes are immune to double-checking by hand -- and that this structural flaw should be enough to 'decertify' those oh-so-modern voting booths. Oh, and the machines' vulnerability to hackers is another minus.

People who have been sounding the alarm on electronic voting for years, sometimes in the-sky-is-falling style, are probably surprised that the sober statisticians at NIST are moving into their corner. And people who dismissed such claims as paranoid claptrap had better take a fresh look.

Delaware doesn't use the infamous Diebold-made electronic ballots that have drawn attention in states like Florida and Ohio. Here, we use older electronic machines - Danaher Controls ELECTronic 1242 Model 6T units, if you want to be picky about it. With their introduction in 1996, Delaware became "the first state to use Direct Recording Electronic Voting Machines," the Commissioner of Elections' office proudly notes. And the level of detail in the state's official instructions on voting cannot be faulted. Leaving nothing to chance, they advise the voter to "part the curtain with your hand" when entering and exiting the booth.

But according to the NIST paper reported on last week, states like Delaware are touting a risky, unreliable voting technology. Direct record electronic machines "cannot be made secure," and paper printers that might be attached to them often jam and fail, the report says.

What's the better way? Some advocate a return to old-fashioned optical-scan ballots that voters punch holes through to cast votes. Others say electronic machines that produce paper "vote receipts" for recounts would be acceptable. The NIST paper, news accounts suggested last week, sees value in both.

Whatever the solution is, Delaware's election overseers should hunt for it without waiting for smoking-gun evidence of election fraud or error. The electronic machines the state uses can only become less credible, not more, unless a change is made.

Originally published Wednesday, December 6, 2006