About 200 citizen lobbyists called for the US Congress to
require that electronic voting machines include paper-trail records
when the group descended on Washington, DC, this week.
The activists called on Congress to move ahead on a bill called
the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act, introduced in
February 2005, but stalled in the House of Representatives
committee. The bill would require all e-voting machines used in
federal elections to include a voter-verified paper trail, and it
requires the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to conduct random
hand counts of e-voting machine records.
As many U.S. states move toward electronic voting systems since
problems in Florida with paper ballots in the 2000 presidential
election, critics of e-voting have questioned the accuracy of the
newer technology. Without a paper trail, e-voting machines could be
manipulated, and there would be little chance of catching the
fraud, e-voting critics say.
Members of the I Count Coalition who came to Washington, D.C.,
this week repeated concerns that many e-voting machines do not
produce a printout of each vote that can be used to double-check
the machine's results. In two days on Capitol Hill, they planned to
meet with about 100 lawmakers and deliver a petition with more than
50,000 signatures calling on the House Administration Committee to
act on the verified-voting bill.
The bill, sponsored by Representative Rush Holt, a New Jersey
Democrat, has 169 cosponsors, more than a third of the members of
the House.
Supporters of e-voting machines say the devices have several
safety mechanisms in place to protect against voter fraud. E-voting
machines are typically stand-alone machines not connected to the
Internet and access to them is limited, supporters say.
Despite some reports of e-voting problems during the 2004
general election, the Information Technology Association of America
(ITAA) called e-voting in 2004 and in off-year elections in 2005 a
"major success." ITAA represents a group of e-voting vendors.
During a press conference Friday, members of the coalition urged
Congress to move ahead with the bill.
Backers of paperless e-voting machines are "choosing technology
over verifiability and accountability," said A.J. Devies, a board
member of the Florida Fair Elections Coalition and Center. "It's
time to pull the curtain away from the little man who says, 'pay no
attention to the man behind the screen.'"
Devies, who uses a wheelchair scooter to walk long distances
because of past back and nerve injuries, has opposed the National
Federation of the Blind in its effort to speed adoption of e-voting
machines. E-voting machines make it possible for blind people to
vote without assistance, the group says.
But technology does not guarantee accuracy, said Devies, a
webmaster and former computer programmer. "Just because people are
disabled does not mean that technology is the answer," she said.
"I've learned from everyone else's [programming] mistakes, as well
as my own."
Holt and three Republican cosponsors of his bill praised the
coalition members for their involvement in the issue. "You're
standing up for the central act of democracy -- voting," Holt said.
"Without a voter-verified paper trail, a recount is
meaningless."
The I Count Coalition is supported by Common Cause, the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, VerifiedVoting.org and several
other groups.
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