Congress looks to paper to ensure honest elections BY JIM ABRAMS The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — A voter fi ngers the cast vote button on the touch screen display, simultaneously registering his or her vote and eliminating any personal record of choices made. A perfect example of the paperless society at work that many in Congress now view as a threat to the integrity of the election system. Lawmakers who pushed for high-tech voting machines after the hanging chad chaos of the 2000 election are saying that computers can only be trusted so far, and that paper trails are the key to an honest vote. Legislation pending in the House would require a voter-verified paper ballot for every vote cast in national elections beginning with the November 2008 ballot. It also would require random audits in federal elections and specifies that the paper ballot is the vote of record in all recounts and audits. Public confidence in the voting process is at an all-time low, said Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., the bill’s chief sponsor. “I shudder to think what would happen with another election where millions of Americans don’t believe the results,” Holt said. But his bill has been hit by a barrage of criticism from state and local election officials and election machine makers who contend the timelines are unrealistic, the audit process is overly cumbersome, the reliance on paper is too restrictive and the money allotted to replace existing systems, $1 billion, is insufficient. “The ramifications of hasty action on this ill-conceived piece of legislation are immense and farreaching,” Donna Stone, a member of the Delaware House of Representatives and president of the National Conference of State Legislatures, wrote to House leaders Wednesday. R. Doug Lewis, executive director of the Election Center of the National Association of Election Officials, said the bill was so objectionable that, if passed, he would recommend that state and local election officials refuse to run future federal elections. A planned vote on the House floor Thursday was put off after the legislation met resistance in the Democratic-controlled Rules Committee, which sets rules for floor debate. “I really am scared we’re waltzing off a cliff here,” said Rules Committee Chairman Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., citing the need for more comprehensive election reform. It could come up Monday. Few were arguing against the need for Congress to restore integrity to the election system. In 2002, Congress passed an election reform act approving nearly $4 billion to correct some of the technology and registration problems epitomized by the “hanging chad” dispute in Florida that left the outcome of the 2000 presidential election to a Supreme Court decision. A 2006 study by the Election Data Services predicted 80 percent of registered voters would use optical scan or electronic voting equipment in that year’s election. About 13 percent would use lever or punch card devices, it said. But Holt argued that with the headlong rush to buy new voting systems, as many as 50 million voters in the 2004 election cast ballots on electronic voting machines that lacked a voter-verified paper audit trail. He said that included up to 1 million in the 10 largest counties of Ohio, where Democrats claimed that voting irregularities were pivotal to President Bush’s re-election.
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