NY Times: Check That Vote

[Wilms]

Opinion

Check That Vote

Published: July 16, 2008

Electronic voting is notoriously vulnerable to technical glitches and vote theft. By now, most states have passed good laws requiring paper records of every vote cast — an important safeguard. But that is not enough. States also need strong audit laws to ensure that machine totals are vigilantly checked against the paper records. That is the only way that voters will be able to trust electronic voting.

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Unfortunately, states don’t require such scrupulous audits. A 2007 study co-authored by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law found that most of the 38 states with voter-verifiable paper trails did not even require audits after every election. The states that do have audits do them inadequately.

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Supporters of honest elections won an important victory when a majority of states enacted paper-trail requirements for electronic voting. But those paper trails will have little value unless they are backed up with audits that are able to detect errors and fraud — and to ensure that the candidate who gets the most votes wins.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/16/opinion/16wed1.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin