Ted Selker, Ph.D., writes in his April 2004 paper, "Security Vulnerabilities and Problems
with VVPT":
"There are many different ways of disenfranchising a person using
a voter-verified paper trail. First, people can be disenfranchised in all the normal ways. They can have registrations problems;
they can have valid design problems, polling place problems, etc. Second, the paper trail can be lost, stolen, or added to.
Third, the equipment can be designed or accidentally set up so it doesn't work, or it slowly changes itself. Finally intentional
fraud can be widespread and created in software in such a way that it can be hidden from the voter and from the ballot worker
on the day of election and not be remedied later. The final problem is that counting paper cannot be done at the accuracy
level that electronic counting can be done. In this way, even if everything is performed correctly, the difficulty of counting
the paper electronically will make it impossible to compare electronic outputs with the paper outputs in a way that can determine
whether an accurate count has been achieved...
Furthermore, VVPT complicates...the setup,
teardown, and operations of the ballot place. It complicates polling place procedures during the vote. It gives extra and
difficult tasks for a person to do and increases the problems with the user experience and the user interface. It also increases
the length of time of voting, which makes it, with more steps, easier to make mistakes."
April 2004 Ted Selker
Michael Shamos, Ph.D., J.D., writes in his paper "Paper v. Electronic Voting Records
- An Assessment," published in the Proceedings of the 14th ACM Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy (2004):
"It is alleged that adding a so-called 'voter-verified paper
trail' to a DRE
machine will either permit tampering to be detected or at the very least will provide a reliable record of how each voter
voted that can be used for a recount, even if the recount must be done by hand. This is incorrect... The [voter-verified]
paper trail provides no assurance at all that her vote will ever be counted or will be counted correctly. The reason simply
is that the paper trail itself become insecure at the moment of its creation.
First, if the machine cannot be trusted, which is the working
hypothesis of paper trail proponents, then it cannot be trusted to deal with the paper trail safely. After the voter leaves
the voting booth, it can mark her ballot as void and print a different one. The voter will have left the booth believing not
only that her vote was cast and counted properly, but that will also be counted properly in any recount. None of these beliefs
is correct.
One might argue that the inspection and testing of the machine
would reveal such abjectly bad behavior, but the claim of DRE opponents is
that no amount of inspection and testing is ever sufficient. If testing is adequate to reveal paper flaws, then it is adequate
to uncover other faults in the machines."
2004 Michael Shamos
Conny B. McCormack, Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, stated in testimony
before the U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration on June 21,
2005:
"Adding another federal requirement for Direct Recording Electronic
(DRE) voting systems to be retrofitted with a voter verified paper audit
trail (VVPAT) component invites a number of problems that could, unintentionally, shatter the system and significantly erode
public confidence in the process... This debate also needs to recognize practical considerations including significant costs,
paper jams and malfunctioning printers, voter delays, difficulty for poll workers, and meaningless receipts. If DRE
programming can be manipulated, that same logic dictates that the programming could be surreptitiously altered to change election
results after the paper ballot is printed."
6/21/2005 Conny McCormack
Kay Maxwell, President of the League of Women Voters of the United
States, in her testimony before the U.S. Election Assistance Commission on May 5, 2004 stated:
"For the VVPT system to work as a backup for counting the vote
accurately, it seems that every voter must verify every ballot... But this is a very tall order. Setting up reliable means
for voters to verify, or, more importantly, refuse to verify, their ballots at the polling place adds a significant burden
at the polling place...
Even with paper records that are actually voter verified, there
are significant remaining questions. There are questions about the accuracy, reliability and fraud-potential for the counting
of paper records, with the long history of lost, mangled and manipulated paper ballots...
If a malicious programmer or an outside 'hacker' can change the
electronic record of the vote, certainly such a skilled person can make the printer provide a paper record that doesn't expose
any error... Under this scenario, the voter and the poll worker are not alerted to the problem. So, in this example, the paper
does not indicate a problem with the machine, and does not provide a safeguard."
5/5/2004
Kay Maxwell
Election Technology Council's "Frequently Asked Questions" section on their website
(October 2005) states:
"Printing voter verifiable ballots adds several layers of cost
and complexity to the process, accompanied by increased risk of failure at the polling place and the associated stress placed
on poll workers... Even the simplest issues must be thoroughly addressed. For instance, a lengthy set of ballot options would
require a lengthy receipt for voters.
The voting process could be 'intentionally'
disrupted by voters who claim the paper receipt does not match how they voted, thereby putting the entire voting process in
question. The time required to vote and verify a paper ballot will likely increase the amount of time a voter spends in the
a voting booth, requiring more voting systems and increasing costs."
October 2005 Election Technology Council
