rent paperless DREs. Many states have
already done so, but many states have
not. All voters who go to the polls in
Maryland and Georgia are forced to use
paperless DREs, as are many voters in
other states. Some other states are using paper ballots now, but could decide
to convert to paperless e-voting in the
future. Without federal legislation, voters in some states will be stuck with
DREs for a long time.
Congress should mandate a specific
class of paper trails: every voter should
mark and cast a voter-verified paper ballot (VVPB). Each ballot can be counted
by hand or scanned in the precincts by
a scanner that checks it for overvotes or
stray marks (the technical term for this
type of system is precinct-count optical
scan or PCOS). If there is a problem, the
voter has a chance to fix the ballot or fill
out a new one. Otherwise, the ballot is
counted and deposited in secure ballot
box. Or ballots can be counted by hand
if desired. These systems can be made
accessible to voters with a wide range
of disabilities through the use of bal-lot-marking devices, which allow paper
ballots to be read, marked, and verified
via an accessible electronic interface.
Most studies have shown that PCOS
systems are at least as accurate as any
other voting system. They are less costly than touchscreen machines, and, if
they fail, marked ballots can be stored
in a ballot box and counted later. Most
importantly, the hand-marked ballots
can be verified and counted without
having to trust computerized systems.
Optical scan systems are already the
dominant technology in the U.S.—they
have been used for many years and the
some have argued
that legislation
requiring paper
ballots would hamper
innovation in voting
technology. But the
main problem in
voting technology
is not a lack of
innovation, but how to
prevent and recover
from bad innovations.
technology is steadily improving.
Why paper and not some other permanent medium such as recordable
compact discs? Paper can be read and
written by people or machines, and,
importantly, by (almost) everyone
without machine assistance. Votes on
paper cannot be removed or changed
without detection. Critical documents
on paper have been handled for many
centuries and the procedures are easily
understood by poll workers and election administrators. For example, it is
easily recognized as a problem if a poll
worker disappears into a back room for
a few hours with a box of ballots.
Of course, simply using paper ballots does not guarantee election in-
tegrity. The ballots must be protected,
and the processes for storing, transporting, handling, and counting them
must transparent. Crucially, paper
ballots enable the routine auditing of
elections by choosing ballots from randomly selected precincts or machines
and manually counting them to see if
they match the machine totals.
Some have argued that legislation
requiring paper ballots would hamper
innovation in voting technology. But
the main problem in voting technology is not a lack of innovation, but how
to prevent and recover from bad innovations. State and local governments
chose to purchase tens of thousands
of DREs in spite of the dire warnings of
computer technologists and activists—
then the true risks of DREs turned out
to be even worse than the warnings.
The existing requirements and certification process did little to protect the
voting system from this and other bad
ideas.
A federal VVPB mandate would channel vendor R&D efforts into improving
optical scan technology, instead of developing and marketing lucrative but
ultimately dubious systems like DREs.
If and when a radically new technology
is proposed, the law can be changed—
after a thorough debate about the true
benefits, costs, and risks of that new
technology—a debate that would have
averted the disastrous experiment with
DREs over the last few years.
David L. Dill ( dill@cs.stanford.edu) is a professor of
computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford
University and has been working actively on policy issues
in voting technology since 2003.
Counterpoint: Daniel Castro
ALL VOTERS WANT and deserve
secure elections; unfortunately, no voting system
currently on the market offers voters verifiable proof
that their ballot has been counted.
Some activists have been especially concerned about the integrity of votes cast
on direct recording electronic (DRE)
voting systems, since these devices rely
on software that can be difficult to au-
dit. While most individuals agree that
voting technology should be improved,
many people disagree on the best way to
improve it. In particular, a vocal group
of activists have popularized the idea
of using paper audit trails—basically a
paper receipt produced by the DRE—
as a countermeasure to fraud and error. Unfortunately, this proposal is an
incomplete solution to a much larger
problem. Moreover, improving voting
systems is not merely a technical challenge but also a public policy challenge.
Computer science is an academic
discipline that is based in logic and
proof, and we should rely on these valuable methods in our analysis of voting
system technology. To understand the
scope of the problem one must first understand that the voting process does
not end at the ballot box; to have secure
elections every step of the voting process must be secure. Specifically, ballots must be cast as intended, collected
as cast, and counted as collected. Paper
audit trails only provide verification of
