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Pushing Paper In The E-Voting Debate
by Michael Martinez
The House Administration Committee last week moved an e-voting bill that has been in the works for a while. During the past two Congresses, New Jersey Democrat Rush Holt pushed for mandatory paper receipts to confirm electronic votes, but those bills stalled.
After the Democratic takeover of Capitol Hill and the heated electoral dispute in Florida's 13th District last fall, the political landscape for Holt's plan appeared to be friendlier in the 110th Congress. But mounting concerns about the practicality of his measure, which has been sponsored by roughly half of the House members, may be eroding the bill's momentum.
The Big Electoral Test Ahead
Supporters of the bill, H.R. 811, want it to be enacted and implemented before another federal election is conducted on potentially problematic machines. With so many states planning presidential primaries in the first two months of 2008, there may be even less time for state and local officials to prepare their voting systems.
Under the committee-approved version now headed to the House floor, six states -- Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, South Carolina and Tennessee -- would have to replace all of their voting machines by 2008. The measure would give states that used any paper-based systems last year extra time to make a full transition. Language added in committee also would boost to $1 billion the federal funding to the states for e-voting upgrades.
Some states have moved on their own this year to mandate paper trails. Florida and Maryland both cleared legislation to migrate to paper-based voting systems. Maryland operated entirely on paperless, touch-screen machines in 2006.
Florida's plan gives counties until 2012 to eliminate touch-screen machines. Secretary of State Kurt Browning said his state would be "in good shape" if Holt's federal bill becomes law, but he would prefer to go at his own pace. "It's not like going to a lot and buying a car and driving off with it," Browning said. "There's an awful lot you have to do to change voting systems."
Electionline.org Executive Director Doug Chapin noted that some states, including New York, are still struggling with deadlines imposed by the 2002 federal election law that moved many states away from paper-based balloting. "We're going into a presidential campaign that is going to be wide open on both sides," Chapin said. "So there is some genuine concern."
New York Elections Board Chairman Douglas Kellner told a congressional panel at a field hearing last week that he does not expect his state can deploy new equipment for next year's presidential primary. But he said new devices may be ready by the fall.
Even though Browning is leading Florida's statewide migration to optical-scan machines, he said states need to be given flexibility. He is concerned that federal lawmakers have not sought enough advice from people with experience running local elections, particularly with respect to conducting audits of the votes.
"The people that [Congress] is getting their ideas from, it's not the people who do this for a living," he said.
Senate Hurdles: Voter IDs And Source Code
Michigan's Vernon Ehlers, the ranking Republican on House Administration, said during last week's debate of Holt's bill that the measure, which was approved on a party line vote, would be dead upon arrival in the Senate.
Senate Rules and Administration Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has said that legislation she plans to introduce this session will largely mirror the House bill. But Chapin said other voting issues could complicate the progress of a paper-trail bill in the Senate, where different parliamentary rules apply.
The language added in the House committee, which was authored by California Democrat Zoe Lofgren, "seems to have addressed a lot of the outlying concerns about the Holt bill," Chapin said. "But it's much trickier in the Senate."
The e-voting debate will give Senate Republicans an opportunity to revive discussion about imposing more stringent voter identification requirements, according to Chapin. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., tried to attach voter ID language to comprehensive immigration legislation last year.
Stricter voter ID requirements were rejected by the House Administration Committee last week. Massachusetts Democrat Michael Capuano was particularly upset when California Republican Kevin McCarthy tried to add the requirements to the bill.
Paper-trail supporters also may have to tread carefully on requirements for e-voting vendors to disclose the source code of their devices. That issue has played a key role in Florida's 13th District election challenge, where Democrat Christine Jennings has sued to inspect the Election Systems & Software devices on which November's contest was conducted.
E-voting vendors are concerned about how much information Congress may require them to provide about their products and whether that will force them to divulge trade secrets. Lofgren said her substitute language, which includes looser requirements on reporting source code, sits better with the technology industry than what was in the original version of H.R. 811.
New Jersey As The State To Watch
Election experts are keeping a close eye on New Jersey, which is currently engaged in multiple e-voting-related lawsuits. The Garden State also is slated to conduct statewide elections in November and a presidential primary on Feb. 5, 2008.
State Superior Court Judge Linda Feinberg is reviewing a lawsuit filed by the Rutgers Constitutional Litigation Clinic that demands the removal of the Sequoia touch-screen devices now used in almost all voting jurisdictions. New Jersey is developing guidelines to satisfy a state mandate on the implementation of voter-verifiable paper trails of e-votes by January.
New Jersey also was one of several states sued by the Justice Department last year for failing to meet federal deadlines to build an electronic voter database as required by a federal law. Alabama, Maine and New York were hit with similar suits. New Jersey was allowed to use its non-compliant database last year.
"In some ways, New Jersey is the new Ohio," Chapin said in a reference to Ohio's balloting controversies in 2004 and 2006. "It's not a battleground politically like Ohio. But as far as there being a state where all of these issues are going on at once, New Jersey is it."
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