December 4, 2003

Bev Harris on the Perils to Democracy by Electronic Voting

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

The complete article is currently (3/28/04) available on the BuzzFlash website at-- http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/12/int03323.html

Excerpts from interview--

BUZZFLASH: There is a bill addressing black box voting in Congress (H.R. 2239), sponsored by Congressman Rush Holt of New Jersey? What are the key features of the bill and do you support the bill?

HARRIS: I support the bill, with qualifications. It does two of the three things that are absolutely necessary, if we are to use voting machines at all. It requires a voter verified paper ballot -- however, we must make sure all four of those words are in there. It must be verified by the VOTER, it must be verified, not "verifiable"; it must be PAPER not digital; and it must be called a BALLOT, which has legal standing, not a "trail" or "receipt." ...

The problem area, and it is a whopper, is that this bill doesn't attack the crux of the issue, which is proper auditing -- and that is something that is needed for any computerized system, including optical scan machines. Right now, we pretty much throw the paper ballot in the toilet. It gets locked in a box that no one can look at -- and we don't use it, even when we have it.

And this leads to the heart of the problem itself: Our voting issue is, at its heart, an auditing problem, not a computer programming challenge. When we designed these systems, we neglected to get input from the accounting industry. We have computer scientists using statistical models to recommend audit procedures, but these models -- many of which have already been passed into legislation at the state level -- would fail if used to audit financial transactions. ...

... The most important thing that we keep forgetting is that the founders, especially Thomas Jefferson, felt that it was critical -- not "important," but CRITICAL to democracy, to keep the vote directly in the hands of the people themselves. Any solution which requires us to trust a handful of experts will, sooner or later, result in the demise of our democracy.

That means we need to retain (and enforce) policies to tally the votes at the polls, in front of observers. ...