Results In on Vote Machines

Electronic voting systems offer substantial advantages to disabled voters, as well as those with reading problems and limited English, experts told the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on Friday. But several warned that technical bugs, inadequately trained election workers and other problems remained.

Against the background of the 2000 election count, with its contested Florida returns and subsequent move to increase reliance on computerized voting nationwide, the commission heard testimony from the panel of experts to gauge the nation’s preparedness for this year’s presidential balloting.

The commission, an independent bipartisan agency that monitors voters’ rights, does not have legal authority to impose reforms, but its reports have influenced federal policy, including the Help America Vote Act of 2002.

Jim Dickson, an official of the American Assn. of People With Disabilities, said the electronic systems offer advantages for disabled voters, who he said were often put in embarrassing situations when seeking assistance and were sometimes hurried through the voting process by impatient poll workers.

Dickson, who is blind, described an experience in which he gave a poll worker the name of his preferred candidate, and the worker said, “You want to vote for who!”

Voters who are illiterate or have limited English proficiency have sometimes been deterred from voting by similar experiences. Some 33 million Americans do not know how to read, and another 10 million are unable to because of failing eyesight or blindness, Dickson said.

Meg Smothers, executive director of the League of Women Voters in Georgia, said electronic voting systems have also decreased the undervote -- the number of votes uncounted because of voter mistakes, machine errors or other problems. Georgia’s undervote rate has lowered from 3.5% in 2000 to below 0.9% in 2003, she said.

Smothers attributed the improvement to the 40,000 electronic voting machines in use across Georgia.

But several witnesses, while supporting electronic systems in principle, described problems that need to be addressed.

“Computerized voting equipment is inherently subject to programming error, equipment malfunction and malicious tampering,” said Rebecca Mercuri, research fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

She noted that during last month’s primaries, battery problems prevented 36% of San Diego County voting machines from being used at the start of voting. In Orange County, 2,000 voters were given electronic ballots listing candidates outside of their districts and other Orange County voters inadvertently submitted unfinished ballots.

California is not alone. In more than 10 states, including Florida, Texas, North Carolina and New Mexico, electronic voting machines have led to problems.

But according to Michael Shamos of Carnegie Mellon University, electronic voting machines are not inherently defective. They malfunction because of engineering errors, he said. Adequate testing before, during and after use can increase their reliability, he said.

Better training of poll workers is also needed, Shamos and others said.

However, Mercuri expressed concern that improprieties would remain a possibility.

“The election officials and the poll workers are no longer the overseers of the process. Instead, the results are generated by proprietary trade-secret equipment, created by vendors with stated partisan interests, and prevented from examination even if there is a question as to their veracity,” Mercuri said.

Possible solutions will be explored at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’ September meeting.