Electronic Voting Systems Pass Their Big Test -- Maybe

Vendors say election validates technology; critics not convinced

By Dan Verton and Patrick Thibodeau

November 8, 2004 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - Electronic voting systems avoided the virtual meltdown that some people had predicted during last Tuesday's election. But critics said the technology still has significant shortcomings that raise questions about the validity of the results tabulated by the machines.
Officials in various states said they encountered relatively minor glitches, such as a North Carolina county's inability to account for about 4,500 ballots cast on touch-screen systems. Nonetheless, the apparently largely successful use of the 175,000 or so e-voting systems deployed throughout much of the U.S. led proponents to call the election a validation of the technology.
"Electronic voting machines took an important test on Nov. 2 and passed with flying colors," said Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America, an IT industry lobbying group in Arlington, Va.
Britt Kauffman, president and CEO of Austin-based Hart InterCivic Inc., whose e-Slate touch-screen systems were used in nine states, said all the reports he has seen point to a "relatively smooth Election Day" for the millions of voters who cast electronic ballots.
But voter monitoring groups posted accounts of incidents that they said show the need for nationwide technical and procedural e-voting standards.
The lack of standards and the inability to verify vote tabulations has created a potentially flawed election process, some critics claimed.
"We need some way of assessing what has happened after the fact," said Peter Neumann, principal scientist at SRI International's Computer Science Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif., and chairman of the National Committee for Voting Integrity (NCVI), a Washington-based advocacy group. "It is extremely difficult to determine what happened because there is an absence of accountability and auditing in those machines."


A voter in Maryland tests an electronic voting machine. Image Credit: The Associated Press

Doug Jones, an NCVI member and an associate professor of computer science at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, said voting "went remarkably smoothly, considering that we had record turnout and considering that it was scrutinized with more intensity then I can remember." But he said little is known about what can go wrong when people use e-voting systems.
"All we can do is compare the number of ballots with the number of votes recorded and wonder, 'Why did people come to the polling place to cast a blank ballot?' " Jones said.
The use of e-voting machines that don't produce a paper record of votes "is the most perplexing thing I've ever seen," said Lillie Coney, NCVI coordinator and a senior policy analyst at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. Part

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