A Bad Electronic Voting Bill

[cal04]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/opinion/03sun2.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

Congress has stood idly by while states have done the hard work of trying to make electronic voting more reliable. Now the Senate is taking up a dangerous bill introduced by Senators Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Robert Bennett, Republican of Utah, that would make things worse in the name of reform. If Congress will not pass a strong bill, it should apply the medical maxim: first, do no harm.

Voters cannot trust the totals reported by electronic voting machines; they are too prone to glitches and too easy to hack. In the last few years, concerned citizens have persuaded states to pass bills requiring electronic voting machines to use paper ballots or produce voter-verifiable paper records of every vote. More than half of the states now have such laws.

There is still a need for a federal law, so voting is reliable in every state. A good law would require that every vote in a federal election produce a voter-verifiable paper record, and it would mandate that the paper records be the official ballots. It would impose careful standards for how these paper ballots must be “audited,” to verify that the tallies on the electronic machines are correct.

(snip)
Ms. Feinstein introduced a better bill last year, which would have required a paper record of every vote, but she could not get enough support to pass it. If Congress cannot pass a good bill, it should let the states continue to do the hard work — and be prepared to explain to voters why it cannot muster the will to protect the integrity of American elections.

[FreakinDJ]

1. Good op/ed

[Wilms]

2. K&R n/t