Black Box Voting

In the week after the Democratic midterm win, there was very little in the news about voting machines. Proponents of electronic voting machines are claiming that the election went smoothly and there were very few problems. They are wrong. There were many problems.

One of the most glaring examples is from Florida's 13th Congressional District This is the seat that was vacated by Katherine Harris when she ran for the Senate. The official vote count in the 13th gave the House seat to Vern Buchanan (R) over Christine Jennings (D) by 369 votes out of a total of 238,000 votes cast. One district using ES&S black boxes with no paper trail favored Jennings by 53% to 47% but 18,000 of the votes cast did not include any vote for congressperson. Really, do you believe that 18,000 people bothered to come to the polls, voted for town clerk and dog catcher, but just couldn't decide who to vote for in the congressional race?

Christine Jennings is requesting a new election, because, with these machines, there is nothing to recount. Her legal battle will be expensive. We can contribute at http://www.christinejenningsforcongress.com/.

We do not want machines like this in New York. We will soon be replacing our lever machines with either Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines or the Paper Ballot Optical Scan (PBOS) voting system. Albany has mandated that a paper trail must be a part of any system chosen by our county Election Commissioners, but the flimsy little receipts that the DRE's produce are not much of an improvement. They don't necessarily represent the voter's wishes, and they would be very difficult to recount. If we chose the PBOS system, then voters would mark real paper ballots, in a privacy booth, and then they would be scanned by an optical scanner. In the event a recount is necessary, it would be easy. A paper ballot can be scanned, rescanned, hand-counted, if necessary, and stored indefinitely to assure an honest, fraud-free election. Scanning is fast and decoupled from marking so the likelihood of long lines is minimized. In the event of a power failure, ballots can still be marked and scanned at a later time. The PBOS system is more cost effective as well, but cost cannot be a serious consideration. Nothing in a democracy is as important as assuring an honest election.

In Montana, on Nov. 7th, there was a very close election, and the control of the Senate was in the balance. Fortunately, Montana uses the PBOS system. Imagine if that election had been held on these ES&S paperless machines.

The control of our country must not be in the hands of people like Rep. Bob Ney, who's Help America Vote Act (HAVA) mandated the use of electronic voting machines. Ney is going to prison soon for his dealings with the infamous lobbyist Jack Abramoff but his HAVA legislation lives on. We must insist that this law be amended. We will have a much better chance of being heard by the new Congress in January.