You would think that after 230 years of voting, Americans would be pretty good at it by now.
Unfortunately, that's not the case.
Not only do a majority of Americans fail to fulfill their duty to cast ballots, but our government has a poor track record of administering elections. And with the midterm elections coming up, making sure all the votes are really counted is more important than ever.
After the debacle in the presidential election of 2000, when the American public learned about hanging and pregnant chads, the U.S. Congress responded by passing the Help America Vote Act of 2002. This act encourages states to switch from punchcard to electronic voting machines, providing funding for these new machines.
Not all states and counties have made this switch, however. For example, Hamilton County, the third largest county in Ohio with a population of 850,000 people, has switched from punchcard to paper ballots, where you fill in a bubble to vote, much like standardized testing.
But Hamilton is moving against the tide. More and more counties around the country are switching to these machines. In the 2004 presidential election, nearly 30 percent of the American electorate voted on electronic machines and this number is increasing each election.
The market for electronic voting machines is dominated by four companies: Election Systems and Software, Diebold Election Systems, Sequoia and Hart Intercivic. Their machines are a substantial investment for counties, costing about $3,000 each. These companies claim the cost is worth the efficiency and ease these machines provide.
Despite this claim, there have been many problems with these machines and there is a potential for even more serious problems as they are used more widely. These machines have malfunctioned on numerous occasions. The litany of errors includes: not turning on, freezing up, displaying the wrong ballot and recording the wrong numbers of votes. Ohio, Florida, Illinois, Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Texas have all reported problems with voting machines.
The integrity of elections held using electronic voting machines is another important issue. The vast majority of these electronic machines do not produce a voter-verified paper receipt, meaning you have no confirmation that your vote actually counts. Twenty-six states have a requirement of a paper trail so the votes can be independently verified, but many first-generation electronic voting machines lack this capability.
These voting machines are also vulnerable because the results are held on memory cards. A security analysis of the most popular electronic voting machine, the Diebold AccuVote-TS - used statewide in both Maryland and Georgia - by Princeton University researchers found that "anyone who has physical access to a voting machine, or to a memory card that will later be inserted into a machine, can install malicious software using a simple method that takes as little as one minute." They claim this software is not only easy to install, but can also steal votes with little risk of detection. "The malicious software can modify all the records, audit logs, and counters kept by the voting machines," the report states.
If the lack of a paper trail and serious questions about the security and reliability of the voting machines were not enough to question the qualifications of these machines, one of the major manufacturers of these machines, Sequoia, is now owned and operated by Venezuelans. The company was involved in the 2004 recall election of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, a controversial election that was questioned by many observers.
Having non-Americans so intimately involved in our election process just doesn't make sense. Furthermore, Sequoia refuses to reveal the source codes for their voting machines, making it impossible to independently audit these machines.
Americans deserve to know when they cast their vote that it will count and that the election they vote in will be secure. And this is something that electronic voting machines currently don't guarantee.
Benjamin van der Horst is a College sophomore from Cincinnati.
This column was published in the Emory Wheel on 9/22/06. For more go to www.emorywheel.com
No comments:
Post a Comment