As California officials consider new security requirements for computerized voting machines, state residents remain conflicted over the future role of old-fashioned paper ballots.
Around 6,000 people weighed in by e-mail, post and fax last month in response to a public inquiry from Secretary of State Kevin Shelley on the pros and cons of requiring touch-screen voting machines to produce paper printouts.
Respondents, which included the American Civil Liberties Union, a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and several politicians, were in broad disagreement over whether moving to an all-electronic election system would improve or detract from the security and accuracy of the voting process.
Groups representing disabled citizens and voting-machine makers argued in favor of touch-screen voting machines, which store votes in digital form. However, a number of computer scientists and political activists maintained that electronic voting with no paper trail heightens the risk of election fraud and undetected error.
"If we walk down the path of 100 percent computerized, paperless voting, we surrender the 'keys to the kingdom' to a handful of private companies who use proprietary software to run elections," wrote Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation and member of a task force appointed by Shelley to investigate election security issues.
Alexander was one of the estimated two-thirds of respondents who advocate a "voter-verifiable audit trail." (In plain English, a paper printout that can be produced after a voter enters his vote on a computer screen, and can be stored as an official ballot in case of a recount.)
Other proponents of paper printouts, which included California Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, a member of an IEEE voting technology standard-setting body and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, referred to a July study by a group of Johns Hopkins University computer science researchers that pointed out security flaws in software produced by Diebold Election Systems.
Although no one presented a proven of example of computer fraud in a U.S. election, paper ballot supporters said the current direct recording electronic, or DRE, machines provide too much potential for undetected vote-tampering. One respondent from Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility even designated voting machines as "a possible terrorist target."
But advocates of paper printouts continue to face stringent opposition from an array of interest groups. In particular, organizations representing the disabled flooded the secretary of state's office with letters extolling the virtues of touch-screen voting machines for individuals with impaired mobility and vision.
The groups argued that adding printers to touch-screen voting systems will be costly and will make it harder for blind people and other disabled voters to use the machines correctly.
"There is no need to add to the complexity of these systems, make them more likely to malfunction, and make them inaccessible," wrote Mary Jo Kittok, of the Western Law Center for Disability Rights.
Another opponent of printouts, the ACLU of Southern California, pointed out that printer-enabled DRE machines are "an unproven device." The group pointed to test runs of printing-enabled machines in which the printers repeatedly jammed.
The secretary of state's office, for its part, is currently reviewing the pile of feedback on the voting issue and plans to incorporate citizens' input into a set of guidelines on election security. Officials said they did not know when such guidelines might be issued.
Meanwhile, the task force appointed by Shelley to examine the paper printout issue has been unable to reach a consensus. While the majority of the 10-member task force did not believe paper printouts were necessary, three members held out in opposition.
