The Voting Machine Blues
Just can't shake 'em . . . or at least so it would appear from this USA today story. States that received money under Title I of the Help America Vote Act for the replacement of punch card and lever machines are struggling to meet the 2006 deadline for getting new voting technology in place. They also have to provide at least one disability-accessible voting unit at each polling place by 2006.

Ohio counties are in an especially difficult situation. The replacement of punch cards is being complicated by a bill enacted last year, which mandates that all voting machines have a "voter verified paper audit trail" (VVPAT). For electronic machines, this means an attached printer that will print out a copy of the electronic ballot to be used for recounts. The AP has this report on the Ohio Board of Voting Machine Examiners' decision last week not to certify (at least not yet) the electronic voting machine with VVPAT manufactured by Diebold.

This appears to be the only machine that even has a chance of getting certified this week, as it must be under the timetable set by Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. (See here for more on that issue, including the litigation filed by a rival voting machine vendor.) If Diebold's system isn't certified by this week, and Blackwell doesn't adjust the deadline, then counties will have no choice but to go with precinct-count optical scan systems. Moreover, it's unclear how counties will accommodate people with disabilities, given that there's no accessible machine that's certified and meets the VVPAT requirement.

The USA Today story also reports on an MIT study of Nevada, the only place where an electronic voting system with the VVPAT has been used on any significant scale. (I'm trying to get a copy of this study, which doesn't seem to be on the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project's website). Ted Selker and his associates at MIT found, unsurprisingly, that few voters actually checked the contemporaneous paper record. Selker states, "I have lost confidence in paper trails."

All of this puts counties in a very difficult position. They can opt for precinct-count optical scan systems, which will require them to have a dual voting system in place -- one type of equipment for disabled voters and another still-unknown system for non-disabled voters at each polling place. Alternatively, they can hope that at least one electronic voting machine with a VVPAT is certified this week, and take their chances with that system -- despite the lingering uncertainty over whether it will work as advertised. The best course of action would be to repeal HB 262, which imposed the VVPAT requirement in the first place, but it doesn't seem like there's much initiative in the state legislature to undo its mistake.

If you were a county election official, especially one in Ohio, you'd have the blues too. - posted by Dan Tokaji @ 11:28 PM