Voting Machines: State Has Long Way to Go

Our votes must be counted accurately even if computer software fails. That simple concept has been championed by technology experts in Virginia and around the country. But on Nov. 3 most Virginia voters will cast their votes using electronic voting equipment that offers no independent way to check the accuracy of the returns.

The General Assembly has already decided that unverifiable direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machines must be phased out -- and for good reason. Subtle bugs occur in all computer systems, and it is impossible to test for all of them. Report after report in recent years has uncovered new ways that purely electronic voting can be corrupted without detection -- or simply fail.

Just this year, a voting machine in Fairfax County offered vote data that did not match poll books, and initial numbers that made no sense. The discrepancy remains unexplained.

We have to do better in our next general election, and we can.

There is a ready solution for unverifiable elections: voter-marked paper ballots read by optical scanners. Optical scan voting allows votes to be counted if computers fail. If quick results are desired, optical scanners can report results as quickly as DREs.

Paper ballots also allow a manual audit of vote tallies in order to check the initial computer count. Many computer scientists in Virginia and around the nation believe that a manual tally audit is as important as using paper ballot scanners. Paper ballots are not a cure-all, but in the age of software they are essential to enable checking the accuracy of machine vote counts. Without them, fraud can be perpetrated more easily -- and even more urgently, errors can be irrevocable.

That is why I have championed optical scan voting. In the state Senate, I carried legislation to require optical scan systems. This is the direction that the country is moving in. In 2008, approximately 60 percent of votes nationwide were cast on paper ballots, and about half the states conducted audits. Optical scan equipment counts nearly all votes in states such as Alabama, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Oklahoma. Florida, Iowa, and Maryland have all begun or completed transition to optical scan.

Yet unverifiable DREs still account for the heavy majority of votes in Virginia, and current state law makes manual tally audits illegal in most cases. A pilot project to study manual tally audits is only just beginning.

To have verifiable voting in time for the 2010 congressional elections, Virginia would benefit from federal government help. HR 2894, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act (S 1431 in the Senate) would provide that help. Sponsored by Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey and Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, the bill would ban DREs, and authorize federal funding to replace them with paper ballot scanners. Sens. Jim Webb and Mark Warner and all of Virginia's representatives should cosponsor HR 2894 and S 1431, and urge its speedy passage.

In neighboring North Carolina, in 2004, a paperless voting machine in Carteret County lost more than 4,000 votes, and threw a statewide election into chaos. The state quickly heeded the lesson, and had paper-based voting systems and manual tally audits in place by 2006.

Virginia has had warnings and near-misses. We've taken incremental steps, but it is time to provide verifiable ballots for every voter. We should not wait for a "Carteret County" to do the right thing for Virginia's voters.
Jeannemarie Devolites Davis, a partner with ICG Government, a technology consulting group, served in the Virginia Senate from 2003-07, and in the House of Delegates from 1997-2002, where she was House majority whip in her third term. Contact her at .