Critics call for e-voting paper trail

At a hearing before the U.S. Election Assistance Commission Wednesday, critics of electronic-voting machines called on the U.S. government to require a voting paper trail, but e-voting machine vendors disagreed on whether vote result printouts are needed.

Outside the Washington, D.C., hearing, a representative of the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) interrupted a press conference staged by groups questioning the security of electronic voting.

Members of TrueMajority.org and other groups waved signs saying "Show my vote counted" and "Computer ate Dady's (sic) vote" and called for a verified paper trail, but Jim Dixon, vice president of the AAPD, said he was able to vote without assistance for the first time this year because of an e-voting machine. Dixon, who is blind, said he's had poll workers in the past question who he wanted to vote for and tell him they were too busy to help him get through the whole ballot.

"A secret ballot delayed is a secret ballot denied," Dixon said, after taking over the lectern at the TrueMajority.org press conference.

But speakers from TrueMajority.org and some computer scientists at the commission hearing said e-voting machine vendors are basically asking the U.S. public to trust that their machines are secure and work correctly.The commission, created by the U.S. Congress in the Help America Vote Act of 2002, has responsibility for administering voluntary elections guidelines and for testing and certifying election equipment.

The U.S. government should demand all e-voting machines used in the November election issue printouts that voters can check and that election officials can use in recounts, said Avi Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and coauthor of a February paper critiquing the security of Diebold Inc.'s e-voting machines. "There's no way to publicly count the vote. The counting is going on inside the computer."

Representatives of e-voting machine vendors disagreed on whether the U.S. government should require a verified paper trail. Kevin Chung, chief executive officer of Avante International Technology Inc., agreed with calls for voter-verified printouts, but representatives of Election Systems & Software Inc. and Sequoia Voting Systems questioned the need for paper backups.

Printouts would "clearly add cost and complexity" to an already complex process, said William Welsh II, a board member of Election Systems & Software. Welsh and Britain Williams, a professor emeritus of computer science at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, said it would be impossible for states to purchase and test printing machines before November's presidential election. The shift to a verified paper trail could take four to six years, but that shouldn't stop states from using e-voting machines, Williams said.

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