- By Dan Veaner
- Opinions
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And voting machines are why HAVA is a problem. It's a catch 22: the machines are required by a deadline, but not only is the technology not up to the task, but people can't even agree on what the technology should do. Ms. Lifton noted that due to a court case the deadline (which was to have been the next September election) on new machines has been extended a year, except for machines for handicapped voters. But in my opinion a year isn't enough time. Why? Four things: Bugs, hackers, accountability, and Murphy's Law.
Don't get me wrong -- I love gadgets. I used to write software for a living. And it would be way cool to be able to vote from my home on the Internet. And think about absentee ballots -- they could potentially be a thing of the past. You could cast your vote from that Internet cafe in the Himalayas! Well, actually we're not talking about Internet voting, we're taking about computerized voting machines.
But they are too untrustworthy. And honestly the current voting machines work great. They are mechanical, but 1) they work, 2) our local election officials know how they work, and 3) our voters don't seem to have any problem using them. They ain't broke, so why fix them?
The Tompkins County Election Commissioners are nervous about the deadlines, because the companies are not coming up with machines the State, or the County for that matter, finds acceptable. But, tick-tock, the deadline approaches without regard to the manufacturers' failure to meet reliability and usability standards. Meanwhile they have to maintain the old machines in case there are no new ones, while implementing a plan that involves the new ones. They are doing it and in my observation keeping their chins up despite the extra work and expense.
Bugs
One of the issues is reliability of results, and a bug in the software of these machines could compromise. Since this is a voting machine and not a program that keeps track of Aunt Nellie's potholder collection, it really matters that the software do what everyone thinks it is doing. The companies, rightly, want to get paid for their work, and to protect it. But the State, rightly, wants access to the code so it can confirm that it does what they think. While I am in the camp that believes in paying software writers, it is important that the State be able to look at the code. It is VERY important.
Hackers
But that increases access for hackers, who have already made everyone's personal and business computing lives so miserable and spawned industries of anti-virus, anti-trojan, anti-spyware, and andti-hacker software and a slew of high-priced specialists. You think they won't go after voting machines? Come on! They're going to make stuffing an old fashioned ballot box look like an episode from Leave It To Beaver. And while the states will attempt to hire trustworthy software engineers to confirm the code is reliable, some will turn out to not be trustworthy. You can trust me on that.
Accountability
This is one of the main sticking points in the debate over which machines to choose. Voters want a paper trail so that recounts and verification are possible. That means printing out the results stored in the computerized voting machines. Or something -- the reliability of the printouts would have to be certified in some way. And it is certainly hackable. Counterfeit vote printouts are going to be a lot easier to produce than counterfeit money.
Murphy's Law
Murphy's Law states that if something can go wrong it will go wrong. And the scenario that instantly comes to mind is this. Joe Citizen steps into a voting booth to cast his vote. Just as he does so there is a power outage. Poof! His vote and everyone's who voted before him on that machine are gone. Now how do you confirm whose votes were lost since the last back up (do these machines back up?)? But, you say, the machines will have UPSs (battery backups) to prevent them from going poof. What if the battery backup fails? What if there is a huge power surge? Poof. Poof! POOF!
What happens when the lights go off with the mechanical machines we currently have? Nothing. If Joe Citizen has a flashlight or a cigarette lighter he can still vote and the machine will dutifully record it.
So the thing is that I think I can agree that election reform is a good thing. No matter how you voted in 2000 and no matter how rabidly you believe that election was flawed, I think just about everyone agrees there were some problems with voting devices in Florida. But when a law requires technology that simply isn't ready to perform reliably, it isn't reform. It's tampering with our right to vote, indeed with the very underpinnings of democracy.
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