Voice of the Voters: Transcript of Matt Blaze Interview

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By Mary Ann Gould (about the author) Page 3 of 4 page(s)

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MB: One of the things that the Secretary of State required was that in many cases the DRE machines all have to have their paper trails recounted—one hundred percent of them, not just one percent. That will certainly prevent certain attacks that would otherwise not be detected with just a one percent recount. They’ve limited the number of DREs for the Diebold and the Sequoia system to just one per polling place in order to accommodate voters with disabilities who can’t use the optical scan ballots without needing assistance, but who might be able to use the DRE machines, and that is intended
to reduce the scale and the number of people who’d have access to the machine throughout the day, to limit what would need to be protected and to make it easier to do that hundred percent recount. These seem like, to me, frankly, very sensible ways of mitigating this. What I’d be less confident in saying is that this is going to give you a secure election, but these seem like steps in the right direction. It’s certainly more secure than not doing these things.

MAG: Now I’ll put you on the spot: Congress is apparently finally waking up and is supposedly considering banning DREs and giving states money to replace [them] with optical scan. Would you support that?

MB: That seems, from what we’ve seen, my opinion, and I’m speaking only for myself, is that that would make me feel a lot more comfortable with the security of these elections.

MAG: But you would still like to see a fair number of procedural changes, as well.

MB: That’s right. We still need procedural changes, we still need to look at the security of the optical scan ballots, but I think the most serious problems we found, and most importantly, the ones that are hardest to correct, once they’ve happened, are the problems with the DREs.

MAG: That even raises the question, because you mentioned checks and balances, and that’s pretty important; I’m wondering if you could ever design and have a DRE system that would meet that, because a DRE system, even with a printer, would never be a separate and independent system.

MB: The disadvantage of a DRE is that the voters’ intentions—are touching a screen, this ephemeral process, that, at the end of it, you’re left with only the record produced by the machine, you’re not left with something that the voter has produced themselves, so you don’t know if it’s an accurate reflection of what they actually intended. So, DREs start from a security disadvantage right there. Now, it’s important not to confuse DREs with touch-screens.

MAG: Understood.

MB: This, I think, has been a source of considerable confusion on the issue because people often equate the nice user interface of a touch-screen, which many voters, particularly disabled voters, like quite a bit because you can, for example, have assistive devices hooked up to it that will speak in different languages, you can have sip and puff interfaces for mobility-impaired voters, and so on. These are all very important considerations, but they don’t actually require a DRE machine in order to accommodate these voters.

MAG: Do you think that we’re going to be faced in 2008 with doing a lot more hand counting to give us any security?

MB: Well, I think if we want secure elections, with the equipment at least that we looked at, we’re going to have no alternative.

MAG: Is there any reason for you to think that, and here again, this is strictly your opinion, that the equipment you didn’t examine, although it covers a large majority, that it would be that much different?

MB: Well, all we can do is speculate. We looked at three. Of the three we looked at, all of them were very deeply and pervasively flawed. Are the others any better? I suppose it’s possible that they are, but unfortunately, they haven’t been looked at with the same kind of scrutiny.

MAG: So, how do you feel as a Pennsylvanian and living in Philadelphia, where you have a Danaher machine which actually doesn’t even have a print-out, and you will be going, unless there is a change, up to that machine, entering your vote and not knowing where it went? How secure will you feel in 2008 if we have no change?

MB: Well, I hope that the procedures that are put in place in Philadelphia to prevent tampering are really sound.

MAG: But we still have that problem without any proof.

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Co-Founder of the Coalition for Voting Integrity. Host of "Voice of the Voters! Radio & Internet. Nationally recognized expert in Quality, Process improvement and Change Management. Associate of the late Dr. W, Edwards Deming. Speaker/seminars at (more...)

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