In Sarasota County, Florida, in the Congressional race in November 2006, 18,000 voters or 15% of the voters
did not vote for a Congressperson, which was nine times higher than the undervote in any other race. That congressional
race was decided by 369 votes. Different explanations have been given as to the high undervote. Two of them cannot be proven:
lack of voter interest in the race, and bad ballot design. The only reason given that has been supported by any evidence
is a memo that ES&S, the manufacturer of the touch-screen direct recording electronic machines that were used, sent to
the Director of Election Services before the election. In that memo, ES&S said that their touch screen machines
had a flaw which was causing the machines to respond slowly to the voter’s touch “beyond the normal time a voter
would expect to have their selection highlighted.” A software upgrade was required, but couldn’t be certified
before the September election, so ES&S was sending a warning sign to post at the polls advising voters that they would
need to press the screen for several seconds to register their votes. That sign was never posted. And the votes
apparently were never registered or counted. Poll workers reported voters having difficulties registering their votes
in over a third of the districts.
If voters had been able to mark their choices on a paper ballot themselves, have that paper ballot counted by an optical
scanner, and saved for a recount and an audit of the optical scanner, the voters’ intended votes could be known.
The Governor of Florida decided that he did not want voters’ votes to be lost again and asked the legislature to put
the voter-marked paper ballot/ optical scan system in place for all future elections, which they have done.
In Chester County, Pennsylvania in the State Assembly race that same November the margin of victory was 28 votes
– 11,616 to 11,588. A recount was requested and duly conducted by counting the voter-marked paper ballots that
had been saved after being scanned. Both sides accepted the results of the recount, and the election question was resolved.
But only nine counties in Pennsylvania have
this voter-marked paper ballot/optical scan system. The rest of Pennsylvania counties have Direct-Recording Electronic voting systems, and there is no voter-marked
paper ballot external to the programming of the machine that can be used for recounts or audits. The voters in these
Pennsylvania counties do not have the equal protection that need to have their votes counted.
Pennsylvania needs to do what Florida and New Mexico have already done, have
the legislature pass a bill that would enable voters in all counties to know that their votes have been accurately registered,
recorded and counted because they have marked a paper ballot themselves, which has been saved and can be used in case of a
recount or to audit the optical scan machine that has counted the ballot.
There are bills in the Senate and in the House, Senate Bill 247 and House
Bill 53, which, if amended slightly, could provide all voters in Pennsylvania with equal protection for their votes. The present bills propose to amend
the Pennsylvania Election Code in two important areas. First of all, they require that a voting system “shall
produce or require the use of an individual voter-verified paper record of the voter’s vote.” Secondly, they require
that “each county shall conduct mandatory hand counts of the voter-verified paper records in at least five per centum
of the precincts” chosen randomly.
However, there are two problems that will prevent SB 247 and HB 53 from meeting
the objective of having every voter’s votes counted as intended, if the bills are not amended.
First of all, these bills would permit the use of paper records that are
not truly voter-verified because these bills permit “a paper printout of the voter’s vote produced by a touch
screen or other electronic voting machine.”
Here’s the problem: The paper printout from a direct recording electronic
machine is not a truly voter-verified paper record for the following reasons:
The paper printout is created by the programming inside the machine rather
than by the voter. Studies have shown that many voters do not verify their votes by checking the paper printout. In
an election in Nevada only 31% of the voters checked. Voters are either in a hurry or trust that the
machine has counted their votes correctly. Furthermore, in studies at MIT and Rice University
voters did not notice mistakes deliberately programmed on the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail. In the MIT study where there
were two errors on each ballot, only 8% said there were errors. And only 31% of college students at Rice University
noticed that changes had been made in their votes when they looked at the votes on a touch screen right in front of them.
When voters have to study a paper printed after the votes have been registered to verify their votes, the non-error detection
rate would probably be even higher. Also, in that same study, 6% of the students forgot to even cast their vote. This would
not happen with a paper ballot.
This is another problem with the use of Direct Recording Electronic voting
systems. In Bucks County, the Coalition for Voting Integrity looked at election night returns from
the 303 polling places and found discrepancies between the number of voters on the List of Voters and the machine counts
in many precincts. Whether the lost votes were votes the voter did not cast because he had forgotten to push the green
vote button, or votes that the machines did not register, or record, or count when cast, cannot be answered because there
are no VOTER-MARKED PAPER BALLOTS to check.
The only truly voter-verified paper records are VOTER-MARKED PAPER BALLOTS.
If a voter marks the ballot him or herself, it is intrinsically voter verified. This vote is cast automatically, as
it has been marked, when it is counted by an optical scanner. This VOTER-MARKED PAPER BALLOT is, in the words of the
Federal government’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, “independent evidence of what the voter believed
he or she was casting” and “can provide an independent audit of the accuracy of the electronic counts”
because it is independent of the software programming inside the machine.
Here are the simple changes that need to be made to the bill to have valid
paper records for recounts and audits: Delete the word “produce,” change all references to “voter-verified
paper record” to “voter-marked paper ballot,” and remove the 4th paper record option, “a
paper printout produced by a touch screen or other electronic device etc.” These changes in the bill are crucial
if the Legislature truly wants to pass a law that will require that all Pennsylvanian voters’ votes are counted as the
voters intended.
The second problem with SB 247 and HB 53 as presently written concerns the
audit provision: SB 247 states that “Each county shall conduct mandatory hand counts of the voter- verified paper records
in at least 5% of the precincts.” However, statisticians do not believe that this is the correct approach to a
statistically significant audit. According to the American Statistical Association Draft Statement on Audits, “Taking
a fixed percent of the total votes will not do the job.” Rather than using language with a fixed percentage in the present
bill now, it might be better to just use the phrase, “a STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT AUDIT following recommended
guidelines of statistical experts.”
Bottom line, however, is that a valid audit can only be based on a VOTER-MARKED
PAPER BALLOT.
I know that I do not have to convince you that valid elections are the cornerstone
of a democracy. My hope is that I have convinced you that the first and most important step to valid election results is to
have the voters mark paper ballots, and that legislation needs to be passed as soon as possible to have this system in place
in every county so upcoming elections in Pennsylvania don’t have the problems that Florida has had in the past.
No voting system, no matter how easy to use it may appear to be, or how easily the votes can be counted for the convenience
of election officials, should be allowed to be continued to be used if it interferes with the voters’ votes being
counted. The preservation of our democracy rests on the integrity of our elections. As our Supreme Court Justice
Roberts recently said, “The right to vote is preservative of all other rights.”
Secure, reliable elections can never be too expensive, they are priceless.
In terms of cost, the VOTER-MARKED PAPER BALLOT/OPTICAL SCANNER system has been found to be most cost-effective system over
the long-run as well as the most secure, accurate and reliable system.
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has the duty to fund secure, reliable and accurate voting systems for ALL its voters.
Please work to see that amended versions of SB247 and HB 53 are passed as soon as possible. If Federal funds are not
available, state funding for the replacement of those voting systems that do not meet the requirements of this bill
, must be included as well.
The voters of Pennsylvania deserve nothing less from their legislators.
I would like to answer any questions that you may have as I have much more
information than I could include in the time allotted. Thank you.
Madeline Rawley
Coalition for Voting Integrity
