Justin Rood says, “Electronic voting machines mostly suck“. I’ve offered some thoughts here and there on this topic on this blog, but now it seems that the National Institute of Standards and Technology thinks paperless electronic voting machines are a problem, too:

Paperless electronic voting machines used throughout the Washington region and much of the country “cannot be made secure,” according to draft recommendations issued this week by a federal agency that advises the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

The assessment by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, one of the government’s premier research centers, is the most sweeping condemnation of such voting systems by a federal agency.

In a report hailed by critics of electronic voting, NIST said that voting systems should allow election officials to recount ballots independently from a voting machine’s software. The recommendations endorse “optical-scan” systems in which voters mark paper ballots that are read by a computer and electronic systems that print a paper summary of each ballot, which voters review and elections officials save for recounts.

The key word is ‘Paperless’. Actually, the idea of paper is just the notion of having some kind of traiI that can be verified at the time of voting and later during recount. I think the Diebold and other touch-screen systems could work if there was a secured paper trail along with the system: something of a locked, transparent container attached to the actual machine that printed off your vote when you made it (so you could see it and verify it before actually voting). If we’re going to keep using these systems, we need this now. Or else we’ll see more stories like this one coming out of Florida.

I’m pleased today, and I’m praying. I’m pleased, both because, in general, things went more or less the way I had hoped they would, or better, than any prior election in many moons. And I’m very pleased that election season is over and I’ll be spared deceptive ads and multiple political phone calls for a good long while.

I’m prayerful for a number of reasons:

Even though many candidates who articulate a vision for America that I can share did well last night, and even though I’m pleased that the Democrats took the House and might even take the Senate, I’m mindful that neither political party is perfect and neither is immune to criticism or the temptation of power. I rejoice that it is no longer the case that the Republicans control everything. I’m thankful for the message sent regarding a need to reassess a quite crucial campaign against Islamic Terrorism and perhaps momentum to change some of the worst abuses of the last two years–particularly regarding our bending of the rules with regard to torture and domestic surveillance and other cherished rights. But I’m not naive enough to think that we’ll move quickly in a direction I think we should: it will take work, it will take compromise,  it will take an articulated vision, and it will take discernment.

I’m also thankful for the public servants–the politicians and their staffs–who have accepted this responsibility, regardless of party, and prayerful that a spirit of serving may fill everything that they do while in office. I rejoice that I have the opportunity to participate in elections and that we can thereby determine the course of our government.

Finally, Jan Edmiston has a very good post reminding me of prayer for those who lost yesterday. I want to reprint it here (and I even stole her picture…):

Elections are different here in the Washington, DC suburbs.

Many years ago, our church’s young adult group was having a Game Night, playing “Taboo” at somebody’s house. This game involves one person trying to get his/her team to say a word without using assorted “taboo” words as clues. Someone picked the word “whip.” And the taboo words included selections like “crack,” “bull,” “flog,” and “lash.”

The clue given was: “De Lay.” And, in unison, everybody in the room said, “Whip.” (At that time, DeLay was the majority whip in the House.) There is no other place in the country where someone could use this clue and unanimously get the correct answer without missing a beat.

On Wednesday we will face unique pastoral concerns in our church: Some
Hill Staffers will have lost their jobs (or at least they will end in January.) Other Hill Staffers will have uncertain futures. Some will awaken to a vast array of fresh opportunities and others will awaken to slammed doors. These are all basically good people who long to serve our country and their lives will have changed long after Brian Williams and Wolf Blitzer close shop Tuesday night. These citizens work long hours and make personal sacrifices to serve our nation. There will be reality to process on Wednesday.

This is what I’ll be doing November 8th. Pray for peace in the nation today.

May peace be with us all.

Interesting piece in Time:

A woman walked into a polling place in Peoria, Ill. last week and proceeded to use one of the new electronic voting machines set up for early voting. She logged on, went through each contest and seemed to be making her choices. After reviewing each race, the machine checked to see if she was satisfied with her selections and wanted to move on. Each time, she pressed YES, and the machine progressed to the next race. When she was done, a waving American flag appeared on the screen, indicating that her votes had been cast and recorded.

But there was a problem. The woman had not made any choices at all. She had only browsed. Now when she told the election judges she was ready to do it again–but this time actually vote–they told her it was too late. Pressing the last button, they said, is like dropping your ballot in an old-fashioned ballot box. There’s no getting it back.

So what?

So this: In one week, more than 80 million Americans will go to the polls, and a record number of them–90%–will either cast their vote on a computer or have it tabulated that way. When that many people collide with that many high-tech devices, there are going to be problems. Some will be machine malfunctions. Some could come from sabotage by poll workers or voters themselves. But in a venture this large, trouble is most likely to come from just plain human error, a fact often overlooked in an environment as charged and conspiratorial as America is in today. Four years after Congress passed a law requiring every state to vote by a method more reliable than the punch-card system that paralyzed Florida and the nation in 2000, the 2006 election is shaping up into a contest not just between Democrats and Republicans but also between people who believe in technology and those who fear machines cannot be trusted to count votes in a closely divided democracy….

So far, at least, Murphy’s Law has been a bigger problem than fraud. Many jurisdictions, especially those with long or bilingual ballots, have struggled to program their computers perfectly, and there have been scattered reports of glitches. In three Virginia cities, for example, electronic voting machines have inadvertently shortened the name of the Democratic candidate in one of the tightest Senate races in the nation. In Charlottesville, Falls Church and Alexandria, James H. Webb’s name will appear on the ballot summary screen page simply as “James H. ‘Jim’”–with no last name. Sounds like a crisis–except that the same thing happened in the June primary and Webb still won. A bigger worry concerns something that is least likely to happen–that someone will somehow meddle with the devices and manipulate vote tallies. It’s not impossible. Princeton computer scientist Edward Felten and a couple of graduate students this past summer tested the defenses of a voting machine made by Diebold, a major manufacturer of such devices. Felten’s team found three ways to insert into the machine rogue programs that allowed them to redistribute votes that had already been cast. In one instance, the testers had to take the machine apart with a screwdriver–an act likely to draw the attention of poll workers. But in two others, they were able to quickly infect the device with a standard memory-access card in which they had installed a preprogrammed chip. Other computer scientists have also breached electronic voting machines. Congressman Vernon Ehlers, a Michigan Republican who has been holding hearings this fall, says manufacturers “have produced machines that are very vulnerable, not very reliable and I suspect fairly easy to hack.”

Concerns about fraud are heightened by the fact that with some electronic voting machines, there is no such thing as a real recount. When asked again for the tally, the computer could spit back the same response as the first time. For that reason, at least 27 states have built in a backup that requires electronic voting machines to provide an attached voter-verified paper trail–a running ticker that allows voters to see on paper that their votes are recorded as cast. That way, if there’s a question about the electronic tally, the paper records can be counted by hand.

It was just such a paper trail that enabled Marilyn Jo Drake, the auditor in Iowa’s Pottawattamie County, to suss out an anomaly in a county-recorder race she was monitoring in June. She noticed that a 20-year incumbent was being beaten 10 to 1 by an unknown newcomer. Sensing a glitch, Drake cross-checked the electronic results against the totals on the paper vote and discovered the veteran was actually well ahead. The problem, it turned out, was the way the candidates’ names had been ordered and coded into the access cards that activated the machines, which were made by Omaha’s ES & S. Drake says she should have caught the problem in the pre-election test runs. “It was human error both on their end and my end,” she notes. Not every county will have an auditor as sharp-eyed as Drake–or an outcome as transparently false as the one she uncovered. “We were just plain lucky,” she says.

We need to demand accountability with the most fundamental aspect of our election system. These machines can be a great improvement, but we MUST have a paper trail, inspected at the time of voting by the voter and secured for future investigation should the need arise. What should we do about it? Call your state rep and complain?

My state offers advance voting, so I took advantage of it and voted today. Lines were shorter. The office was conveniently located a few minutes away. They’re still using those Diebold machines that don’t have a paper trail. But its an honor and a privledge to participate in our electoral process.

Today is primary day in our fair state, so I voted. First time voting on electronic voting machines. They were Diebold machines, the ones that have cornered the market (likely because they’re some of the best made, or cheapest to own/operate, or the company is well connected, or some combination of the above). I like the idea of electronic voting, but like any system there are potential flaws, and I worry about them some. It would make me feel better if there were a paper-trail along with the electronic system, and I really don’t know why there is any resistance to incorporating that. It could be securely added, and could permit user visual inspection that their vote was accurately registered at the time of voting (at least on that paper record), and offer some method of recount should there be any contest of the outcome.

There was a small learning curve for me, but more so for the predominantly elderly voters there with me. The biggest complaint I heard: the person selected by the voter was supposed to have ‘a red box and x’ next to their name, but the contrast was such that it didn’t look red. It looked some dark gray color. Contrast can be adjusted on the machines, and from an angle you can see it was indeed red. Seems like a minor point, but everyone asked about it. People WANT their vote to count, and I guess that they dot the ‘i’s to make sure.

Beyond that, the only other observation was that, at least for my party affiliation, only one race was contested. None of the others were, even for the races where the candidate was not an incumbent. That’s a shame, in my humble opinion. We need more people willing to serve in government. Which is the bigger factor for discouraging people to run: the money required, the connection to special interests to get some of that money, the time away from family, the general public negative perception of politicians, apathy? I’m not at all sure.

But I voted. And there was even a line this morning at 9am. A small line, but a line. I had to wait two minutes. If the races were more contested, the line likely would have been longer. I hope they get more machines for the November election.