June 24, 2005

We've heard a lot recently about the need for election reforms. In response to charges of vote fraud, our state legislature has been struggling to enact legislation requiring voters to prove who they are by showing a photo ID before casting their ballots.

In Washington, I'm working on protections for a different part of the process - the counting of ballots. I recently became a leading cosponsor of bill H.R. 550, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act (VCIA), to address the next possible cause of post-election conflict before a dispute happens.

The 2000 presidential election clearly demonstrated the need to guarantee clear, accurate and prompt results on election day. Since then, we have moved forward in the effort to replace antiquated voting machines which have been found to have confusing formats, ballots susceptible to "hanging chads," and other factors which may make voters' intentions unclear. Some of the new computer systems being brought in to replace older technologies raise new concerns, however.

It is typical for computer vendors to insist that their systems are reliable and, when properly handled, secure from malicious invasion. Common experience with home and business computers, however, shows that computers can crash due to software or hardware failure, suffer power surges and outages, and be hacked by programmers intent on altering the information inside.

Accordingly, for me it's a "no-brainer" that electronic voting machines should produce paper trails so that ballots can be counted by hand if necessary. Due to the importance of elections, we simply cannot be expected to take on faith any vote total that an election system displays on a computer screen.

The VCIA Act would require voting machines to produce a permanent paper record which could be used for recounts. It would also require that voters be allowed to verify that the paper record properly represents their votes. Under the law, this record would be stored separately and securely, and the paper trail established by this provision would take precedence in any recount.

The law would also ban the use of undisclosed software in the voting machines, wireless communication with the machines, or the connection of the machines to the Internet.

Opponents of this bill argue that it's unnecessary to have a paper backup for equipment which, if properly designed, should be foolproof. They also say that vote fraud in the past has often involved stuffing ballot boxes with extra ballots, and that eliminating the ballots will eliminate a known opportunity for fraud.

That's certainly true, but over the years we have had a lot of experience learning the proper procedures necessary to prevent ballot stuffing. Everybody understands that if a vote is marked on a ballot, the ballot is cast, the ballot box is properly guarded and the votes are counted by honest and competent officials, then the results will be correct.

When a vote is merely an electronic signal manipulated by software and registered somewhere on a hard drive, however, people will always wonder about close results, and there will be no way to double check them. This is demonstrated by the 2004 presidential election in Ohio where allegations of vote fraud persist because no evidence exists to dispel the charges.

Most Americans have confidence in the honesty of our elections, but enough questions are raised after close votes to make it necessary to root out the potential for questionable results, whether by error or fraud. H.R. 550 will help and deserves our support.