By Eliza Newlin Carney, NationalJournal.com
© National Journal Group Inc.
Monday, April 7, 2008

When Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., introduced legislation five years ago to require all voting machines to produce paper trails, many of his colleagues eagerly hopped on board.

	Public trust in touch-screen voting machines is at a low point, and the companies that manufacture them have done little to restore public confidence.
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Touch-screen voting machines, which many states had rushed to embrace in the wake of the 2002 Help America Vote Act, had fallen out of favor. The machines remain deeply suspect to critics who say they're vulnerable to hackers, don't work properly and can't be audited because they produce no paper records.

But Holt's original bill, the 2003 Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act, ran aground amid opposition from state and local election officials. Election administrators object that a federal paper trail mandate usurps their local authority. Doubts have arisen, too, that retrofitting touch-screen voting machines with printers might simply create fresh problems, including paper jams.

To Holt's credit, he's listened to his critics and come back with a much scaled-back bill, the Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act of 2008. That legislation, which sailed through the House Administration Committee on April 1, would simply authorize federal funding for states to buy voting machines that produce paper trails. The bill also would help states pay for voting system audits and printing emergency paper ballots.

It's a pragmatic approach that deserves quick approval. Holt wants the money doled out to the states in time for Election Day, and he is shopping for a Senate co-sponsor willing to stick with his simple, noncontroversial approach.

"It's urgent that it move quickly," Holt said. "The urgency of the legislation should be obvious to just about anyone in the country now. Because there's county after county, state after state, where the election results, for one reason or another, have been called into question."

Indeed, ever since hanging chads in Florida disrupted the 2000 presidential election, voting machine headaches have refused to go away. In every subsequent election, voting machine snafus have dogged one congressional and legislative race after another. Little wonder that election officials all over the country are spending millions to replace touch-screen voting machines.

In Florida, election officials are gearing up to spend millions to replace thousands of touch-screen machines that are headed for the junkyard following problems in the 2006 congressional race. Democrat Christine Jennings continues to maintain that voting machines malfunctioned in that contest, which Republican Rep. Vern Buchanan won by 369 votes. (Jennings will challenge Buchanan again this fall.)

Some 1,800 electronically cast ballots registered a "no vote" in that election, prompting GOP Gov. Charlie Crist to support calls for a ballot trail. Some touch-screen machines will remain in use in Florida, but most will be replaced by optical-scan machines that produce a paper trail and that some experts consider more reliable.

Florida isn't the only state doling out big money to return to paper ballots. In one county in Houston, Texas, GOP leaders pushed for paper ballots in the March primary after complaints that some touch-screen votes had flipped before the voter's very eyes. Other states, including Colorado and California, have decertified touch-screen voting machines because of concerns over their accuracy and security.

The perfect voting technology has yet to be developed, of course. And experts who track election and voting agree that well-trained poll workers are at least as important, if not more important, than the machines they operate. Still, public trust in touch-screen voting machines is at a low point, and the companies that manufacture them have done little to restore public confidence.

Consider the recent, extraordinary threat issued against esteemed Princeton University professor Edward Felten by California-based Sequoia Voting Systems. Officials at Sequoia, one of the big three touch-screen voting machine manufacturers in the U.S., got wind that New Jersey election officials might ask Felten to analyze one or more of the state's Sequoia Advantage voting machines.

Instead of welcoming this opportunity to prove that their machines function properly, Sequoia officials actually threatened Felten with a lawsuit. In an e-mail that Felten posted on his blog, "Freedom to Tinker," Sequoia vice president for compliance/quality/certification Edwin Smith warned Felten that, should New Jersey invite Felten to analyze the machine, it would violate "their established Sequoia licensing Agreement" and Sequoia has already "retained counsel to stop any infringement of our intellectual properties."

In the meantime, Sequoia itself has announced that it has secured Wyle Laboratories to review and test the source code and accuracy of voting equipment used in New Jersey. It's a positive step, but it doesn't erase the doubts raised by the company's aggressive attempt to block outside scrutiny. Sequoia officials could not be reached for comment.

Unfortunately, Holt's modest bill will likely face an uphill slog. It's an election year, and Congress is justifiably focused on a host of higher-profile issues, from the mortgage banking crisis to the economic downturn and the Iraq war.

But come November, Holt's paper trail bill could seem a lot more urgent. As dozens of voters, election officials and candidates can testify, Americans have yet to see the last of voting machine meltdowns.

-- Eliza Newlin Carney is a NationalJournal.com contributing editor and writer for National Journal and Government Executive. Her e-mail address is ecarney@nationaljournal.com.

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