A Vote for Electronic Balloting

Riverside has become the first California county to do away with the venerable paper ballot, adopting instead an electronic system that will enable voters to make their choices in November’s general election by touching a computer screen.

Government officials and political party leaders have toyed in recent years with various gadgets designed to streamline and quicken the election process. But according to state and county officials, Riverside County’s 615,000 registered voters will be the first in the state to move wholesale into new technology, using machines like ATMs at all 715 polling locations from Corona to the Arizona border. It is the largest application of the technology nationwide.

The new system has obvious benefits. Compiling results on election night will take half as long as tallying paper ballots, and voters can change their mind midway through voting. While many paper ballots are thrown out because of mistakes, such as errant pencil marks, the new system will point out mistakes--such as three candidates chosen for two open school board seats--before ballots are cast.

And, while the machines cost Riverside County nearly $13 million, county Registrar of Voters Mischelle Townsend estimates that the county will save $600,000 in printing and paper costs on this election alone. Townsend is assembling an army of 3,000 volunteers who will introduce the new technology during the Nov. 7 election.

“There are advantages as the technology grows that make the whole election system better,” said Hal Dasinger, an elections analyst with the California secretary of state’s office in Sacramento who is helping to develop the state’s new high-tech voting standards.

Systems like Riverside County’s are expected to become the norm. Los Angeles County also will offer voters touch-screen voting in a trial at nine polling places in November. Similar systems have been tested from Piedmont, an affluent Bay Area community, to Cleveland and Beaver County, Pa.

The Riverside County system, though it makes the pencil-and-paper ballot look archaic, is considered just a steppingstone to Internet voting, which has already been used in one binding election. In March, Arizona Democrats used the Internet to vote in the presidential primary, though traditional polling sites were open as well.

But are elections ready to go high-tech? Many say they are not--and in coming years, the public will have to decide not only whom to vote for, but how to vote.

Election officials promoting computer voting can expect opposition from an eclectic group of critics--conspiracy theorists, civil rights organizations worried about voting access for minorities and the poor, and crusty academics concerned about the security of elections.

Shuddering at the prospect of hackers hijacking an election, some say paper ballots aren’t quaint relics but modern necessities needed to fight fraud.

Election officials, while they say that no voting system is flawless, agree that there are security concerns with electronic voting. Both the California secretary of state’s office and the Federal Election Commission are developing their first standards for using the Internet in elections--and are urging caution.

“The technology gets to a certain point where people get suspicious of it,” Dasinger said. “It becomes hard to verify things like freedom from fraud and manipulation.”

Critics have a host of problems with electronic voting systems.

Many cite the so-called digital divide and say that the poor, minorities and the elderly--groups that, statistically, have less exposure to computers--could be intimidated by the new systems.

“You thought it was hard to choose between Bush and Gore. Now you’ve got to figure out how these things work,” said Marc Strassman, executive director of Valley Village-based Smart Initiatives Project, a group that favors electronic voting in principle but is skeptical of the touch-screen system.

What makes sense to technically savvy bureaucrats may not work for some real voters, say critics.

“I wish that elections officials would do more homework on their own communities before they go to the expense of buying the glitziest system they can,” said Deborah Phillips, chairwoman of the Voting Integrity Project.

Phillips’ organization, based in Arlington, Va., went to court to block online voting in Arizona’s Democratic primary. The group argued unsuccessfully that the system discriminates against minorities and the poor.

“It’s a very valid concern in Riverside County too,” Phillips said. “It can sound like the best thing since sliced cheese, but if it’s intimidating and hard to use, it’s not the right choice.”

But the overriding concern is fraud.

Jim Condit Jr., director of Citizens for a Fair Vote Count, a Cincinnati-based organization, represents one end of the peculiar alliance fighting innovation in elections.

An unabashed conspiracy theorist, he features an upside-down American flag on his Internet site as a “symbol of distress.” He believes electronic voting will lead to fraud. “There must be a paper trail. So there must be paper ballots,” he said. “We are depending on a bleep of energy that goes into a machine. There are not enough checks and balances.”

State officials, however, praise Townsend for being cautious and sensitive about the new system. Townsend has interviewed scores of voters after pilot tests to address concerns that the new system could be intimidating.

She focused on elderly and minority communities. Of those interviewed, 96% said the new system is easier to use than paper ballots, Townsend said. Many older voters were pleased that the type on the computer screens is larger than the type on paper ballots.

The system is high-tech--but not too high-tech. The units are not connected to the Internet or any computer network, and therefore there is no danger of anyone hacking into the system to manipulate the vote, officials say.

Instead, votes are stored inside each machine in two locations: on a hard disk drive and on a cartridge, which election workers will remove when polls close and take to the registrar’s office for tallying.

Riverside County will still offer traditional paper ballots to those who are voting by mail.

In the end, Dasinger said, the new system will prove faster, cheaper and more secure than paper ballots.

“If you want to guarantee a conflict in an election, have the same people count the same stack of ballots twice,” he said. “Every voting process has its problems. . . . We just need to go slow.”

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New Voting Machines

A touch-screen computer voting system will be introduced in Riverside County in November. Los Angeles is among other counties experimenting with the system.