Nevada puts e-vote on paper
By Rachel Konrad
Associated Press
CARSON CITY, Nev. — Alarmed by software glitches, security threats and computer crashes with ATM-like voting machines, officials from Washington, D.C., to California are considering an alternative from an unlikely place: Nevada.
Associated Press
Silver State voters cast electronic ballots last week on a $9.3 million voting system with more than 2,600 computers and printers in every county. The primary was free of the serious problems that have embarrassed registrars in Florida, California, Maryland and other states with touchscreen machines.
Stickers were handed out at the Washoe County administration complex in Reno last week to mark the new voting system.
"They were incredibly organized," said Marc Carrel, assistant secretary of state in California, where several counties are preparing to install similar equipment next year. "I think California could pull off a similar election if we had adequate training and education programs for poll workers and voters."
Credit the training in Nevada, and credit the printers — which give computer scientists and voter-rights advocates assurances that elections can be fully audited. As many as 50 million Americans elsewhere will use paperless touchscreens this November, and critics say hacking, malfunctioning and other problems in only a few counties could have huge implications in a tight presidential contest.
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein has co-sponsored legislation that would force hundreds of counties using touchscreens to install printers by requiring all voting machines to produce a paper trail by July 2006. An aide to the California Democrat said Nevada's election marked a turning point in the contentious debate over touchscreens.
"The Nevada election demonstrates that you can have efficient electronic voting machines yet at the same time have a paper trail so voters can be assured they've voted accurately and their vote is being recorded accurately," Feinstein spokesman Howard Gantman said.
Many registrars oppose paper ballots, insisting that printers — which cost about $800 each — are prone to jamming and too complicated for poll workers. They require counties to purchase ink and paper, negating key cost advantages of paperless systems.
Kathy Rogers, the Georgia elections director who monitored voting in Las Vegas, said printers are not a panacea and could have unintended consequences: Unethical poll workers could use the printed ballots to determine how individuals voted.
(In Hawai'i, voters will use an optical scanner vote-counting system, which has been in place since 1998. Every precinct will also, for the first time, have at least one eSlate electronic voting machine designed for disabled and non-English speaking voters. Voters will be free to use either system.)
Few would have predicted that Nevada would become a flashpoint for voting technology. In the previous election, seven of 17 counties used old-fashioned punch-card machines.
One poor, isolated county in eastern Nevada, White Pine, had to rent storage space for the newfangled gizmos; it kept its punch-card machines in a cave. Douglas County is storing touchscreens in the fireproof server farm formerly rented by Harvey's Casino.
In 16 of 17 counties, every voting terminal includes a small black printer with a 300-foot roll of paper inside. Registrars will keep the paper for 22 months and randomly select a small percentage of machines to compare printed records with memory cartridge results.
Nevada's primary did have a few glitches, but nothing like problems elsewhere. In 2002, New Mexico's Bernalillo County drew 48,000 early voters — but only 36,000 were initially counted due to a glitch in the software used to tally votes from the paperless touchscreens. In North Carolina that year, a software bug deleted 436 electronic ballots from six machines in two counties. The machines erroneously thought their memories were full and stopped counting votes, even though voters kept casting ballots.
Because of such mishaps, Illinois will require a paper record of every ballot in 2006. Although most of Illinois' 110 election jurisdictions use optical scan equipment, two of the largest — Chicago and the remainder of Cook County — are considering touchscreens.
Dianne Felts, director of voting systems and standards for the Illinois elections board, said Nevada's primary impressed her.
"It heartened everybody here because we were all so worried that the printers would jam," Felts said. "It seemed to work very well there. Obviously it can be done elsewhere."
