NY: Voting last, voting smart

A new report rejects electronic screen machines that lack a paper trail for verification

First published: Saturday, December 9, 2006
For original article

New York will be the last state in the nation to decide on what kind of voting systems will replace its outdated lever machines. That's largely because the Legislature tossed the issue into the laps of the counties, which must decide individually what types of voting machines to buy to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act.

But it's not all bad news, as some good government groups, notably the League of Women Voters, have been saying all along, on the grounds that it was better to wait and see what other states did, and avoid making their mistakes. And now comes a report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology that reaffirms that view.

The institute minces no words about electronic voting. It "cannot be made secure," the report states, and shouldn't be used without a paper trail.

Already the momentum is building for a federal standard that would put the report's findings into a national standard. Last Tuesday, the Technical Guidelines Development Committee, a federal panel, agreed that any new voting system should provide a way to verify results independently. It is up to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to decide whether to adopt such a standard.

The institute report endorses so-called optical scan machines that have backup paper records. Under this system, voters mark paper ballots, much as bettors fill out a paper lottery form, which are then scanned electronically. The ballots are then stored and can be retrieved in the event of a recount.

Some electronic voting machines, which resemble ATM machines, also produce paper records that can be used for recounts. But not all. In some states, the electronic ballot is final. If there is a tight race, or if a candidate charges fraud, there is no way to double check each ballot and determine if the election was fair. The report specifically rejects these machines.

New York requires a paper trail for whatever type of system the counties decide to purchase, so a federal standard would pose no problem here. But critics are right to warn that electronic screen voting is still risky, given the chances for a glitch, or outright sabotage, in the coding. Optical scan machines, which we have endorsed, produce easily verifiable results and are much less expensive than electronic screen systems. And now there is a national report that endorses optical scan systems as well. All of a sudden, the choice for counties becomes an easy one.