End secret vote counts - a story for everyone

SAVE AS FAVORITE

VIEW FAVORITES

By Nancy Tobi (about the author) Page 1 of 2 page(s)

opednews.com Permalink

For OpEdNews: Nancy Tobi - Writer

Author's note: I edited this story at the request of a reader, who was concerned that my position on technovoting was too ambigously represented in the piece. He asked that I make it more clear, and I took his critique to heart. In editing, I simply included a piece of the conversation between Faye and myself regarding the use of technology in elections. This is a true story; if my recollections are off, maybe Faye will let us know in her own words her thoughts on the issue. -April 13 1:30 PM

I received a phone call this morning from Faye in South Carolina. She got my number from the "13 Points" document, ("Thirteen Issues with the Holt Bill (HR 811) As Written" http://www.democracyfornewhampshire.com/node/view/3572 ) which is being handed out among election officials nationwide, and has my phone number on it apparently. She called to say she has questions about this Holt Bill.

"I was at a Republican County meeting a few days ago, and someone told me about this bill. I'd never heard of it, but it sounded bad."

Faye is a precinct clerk, responsible for managing and administering elections in her precinct. I asked her what were her concerns. She said "Well, they say it is going to require paper ballots, and that you can't pick up the machines the day before the election." (No sleepovers.)

I asked why these were problems for her. Well, she is responsible for picking up the machines the day before the election, five of them, on a 2-hour (each way) drive, and to pick them up in the morning would mean her election day would start at 2 AM. She typically picks them up the night before and brings them to a secure location from the County central office. I explained that I think that was fine, the problem citizens had was when the machines were brought to people's homes. She concurred that this would be a problem.

So I asked about the paper. "We just got all these machines, got everyone trained on them, to change everything again would cause a lot of confusion and trouble."

I agreed with her. It would indeed be a nightmare and contradictory to sound election administration practices to constantly change technology and other management requirements. I told her that's why so many of us ordinary citizens were concerned with this bill, because it seemed to have been written by folks in Washington ("yep, in their ivory towers," she concurred), who have no idea about running elections and who don't seem to care that every small change, never mind big changes, can destabilize the system.

I also said, two problems with the paper part of Holt is that 1) it mandates problematic solutions, adding printers that can jam and cause problems (she said, "yep, just like any computer!"), and 2) that it offered no funding for this anyway. She didn't like that one bit.

But I asked again about the paper. Did they already have some sort of paper trail? She told me they have the paper tallies at the end, but that's it. So we talked about how voters like to feel the ballot in their hands, how they don't really know if the machine is counting their vote as intended, how without paper there is no way to do a recount in a close race. I talked a bit about New Hampshire, how all our recounts are manual, how we have a long history of reading voter intent on the ballots, and so on.

She said "I am a former federal employee, and I know exactly what you are talking about!" I didn't quite know what she was alluding to, so I asked her to explain. She said, "Well, I remember when the Paper Reduction Act was passed. Everyone was supposed to use computers and less paper. We had more paper than ever from that! People printed out everything, all their emails, everything! People like paper!" And then she said, "So why did they sell us all these machines that don't use paper to begin with???"

Good question.

At this point I told Faye that I thought this was something to really think about. I said, I know that Americans love technology, and I know that we use it successfully for all kinds of things. But really, when you think about it, does it really belong in our elections? We pondered this question together. Computers don't let you see the votes being counted. Is that any way to run democratic elections?

"Well," she said, "why wouldn't we just go to a system like you have in New Hampshire, with paper and scanning machines. Seems easy to use and then you'd have the paper."

Now, here in New Hampshire, we have actually been fighting against the use of our Diebold optical scanners, because just like Faye's touch screen machines, they too use secret vote-counting software, and they too are easily tampered with. We believe that secret vote counting violates the New Hampshire Constitutional imperative to "sort and count" our votes "in open meeting."

But even in New Hampshire, with our strong culture of grassroots democracy, this fight is an uphill climb. New Hampshire regularly conducts hand count recounts following every election, and we have never found a problem with the optical scan counts. This could be because the recounts deter tamperers, it could be that tampering did occur, but in races we happened not to recount, it could be that Diebold and others understand full well that NH Secretary of State Gardner is a real nice guy, but cross him at your peril. Or who knows what or why. But New Hampshirites enjoy an exceedingly high level of trust in our election system, and so our legislators seem to feel "if it ain't broke, no need to fix it."

1 | 2

www.democracyfornewhampshire.com

Nancy Tobi is co-founder, former Chair, and website editor for Democracy for New Hampshire (DFNH). She is also a founder and Chair of the NH Fair Elections Committee. Nancy is the author of numerous articles on election integrity, including "The (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

Contact Author

Contact Editor

View Authors' Articles

Book Recommendations for "Election Reform"

The Election After Reform: Money, Politics, and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (Campaigning American Style)
by Michael J. Malbin

$34.95
Lowest New Price $28.53
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Rowman

Election Reform: Politics and Policy
by James W. Ceaser

$27.95
Lowest New Price $20.85
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Lexington Books

ELECTION 2000: Uncounted Votes
by Committee on Government Reform

$19.95
Lowest New Price $19.94
Number of pages: 92
Publisher: Cosimo Reports