Florida Senator Bill Nelson, who last week called snafus during a recent election in his state “a mockery of democracy,” has introduced a bill that would ban paperless voting.
Nelson, who represents the state that has come to symbolize election problems for its controversial handling of the 2000 presidential recount and a disputed congressional election in Sarasota in 2006, warned in a statement that, “if Congress doesn’t get this done, I’m afraid our democracy could die from lack of legitimacy.”
Nelson’s bill is intended to shore up the nation’s electronic voting system and restore voter confidence in the way all states record, tabulate and verify votes.
Specifically, Nelson’s legislation would require all electronic voting systems,
including direct record electronic (DRE) machines, to produce a checkable
paper record.
It also would prohibit top state election officials from working on candidates’ campaigns. In 2000, then-Secretary of State Katherine Harris oversaw Florida’s recount while also serving as a top campaign official for
GOP candidate George W. Bush.
But election integrity activists expressed frustration that the bill doesn’t go far enough in ensuring that votes are counted accurately and that election results can be audited.
One activist, speaking off the record for fear of straining relations with key political figures, told internetnews.com that Nelson missed “an opportunity to do something really new and innovative. It’s very
disappointing.”
No one on Senator Nelson’s staff was available for comment at press time.
Nelson’s bill is pretty much a companion to legislation filed in the House
last week by U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, except for the ban on conflict of interest
on the part of elections officials, which is not part of the Holt bill.
Another difference between the bills is that, while both require random
audits of paper records against electronic tabulations in every
congressional district, the Holt bill exempts states that have mandatory
recounts under certain conditions.
“This is what we named ‘The Get Out of Audit Free’ card,” said John Gideon,
executive director of VotersUnite in an
e-mail to internetnews.com.
Gideon said his organization supports many elements of both bills, such as
the ban on wireless communications, requirements for disclosed source code
and hand audits, as well as the mandate that testing labs be contractually
independent from vendors.
But he said his group isn’t endorsing either bill because “we believe we
have a duty to call attention to the bill’s unacceptable shortcomings and to
call for the needed amendments.”
The group wants legislation to ban the use of DREs and require the use of
paper ballots. The bills just introduced only require a print-out of
electronically-recorded votes, which Gideon’s group calls an
unreliable means of verification.
Voting system experts like Ted Selker, co-director of the CalTech-MIT Voting
Technology Project, have noted that the vast majority of voters fail to
check the print out against how they think they voted. In their view, that
obviates the intended benefit of the system.
The election integrity groups also want greater citizen oversight of the
audit process built into the law.
The Coalition for Voting Integrity of Pennsylvania, Black Box Voting, Florida Fair Elections,
New Yorkers for Verified Voting and the Sarasota Alliance for Fair Elections
have all expressed reservations over the bill.
There is also a lack of unanimity among election integrity activists over
the use of DREs.
Advocates for voters with disabilities prefer DREs to paper
ballots because DREs allow blind and otherwise physically challenged
individuals to vote privately and independently. This may be why neither the
Nelson nor Holt bill ban them.
But Warren Stewart, policy director for VoteTrustUSA.org, said that the two
goals are not necessarily antagonistic.
“There’s nothing about the direct recording of votes to computer memory that
provides accessibility; it’s the computer interface that provides that.
There’s all kind of innovation possible in making the verification of paper
ballots accessible. It’s perfectly reasonable that it should be, but it
doesn’t require a DRE to do that,” he told internetnews.com.
Last week, Nelson was the first witness heard during the Senate Rules and
Administration Committee hearing
on voting reform.
Other senators, including California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who heads the
Rules panel, are also expected to introduce voting reform legislation in the
coming days.
