Reader Note by Brigitta Mullican: A Verifiable Voting System
Nov 25, 2009 17:09 - 2 Comments
>Will Rockville consider using the optical-scan voting machines in the 2011 election? The City of Takoma Park used the new voter verified technology for their November 3rd Election.
Optical-scan voting machines offer a relatively high degree of verification support. These machines save a record of the votes and allow auditors to go back and verify results if necessary. Maryland should adopt optical-scan systems which cost less than the touch-screen voting systems.
More information about the 2009 City of Takoma Park election is available at their website.
More information about the Scantegrity application is available at www.scantegrity.org.
Brigitta Mullican
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I’m so glad you wrote about this, Brigitta! I’ve been speaking out on this issue for many years. The General Assembly, as you and others probably remember, narrowly voted several years ago to replace the Optical Scan technology that 14 jurisdictions were already using with untested electronic voting machines. After a series of snafus, demonstrated vulnerability to hacking, and the lack of a paper trail caused most to rethink the wisdom of these machines, the General Assembly voted to jettison them. The cost of buying new machines (yet again!) may cause some to lobby for a delay. I hope the shift moves forward as planned for 2010 at the State level… and 2011 for Rockville. (By the way, Takoma Park is the home of “FairVote” which has been an outspoken leader on these issues and why they started earlier.)
Germany’s “supreme” Court ruled in March 2009 that electronic voting machines do not allow the person casting a vote to actually verify that their vote was counted. So Germany did its elections this year on paper.There are deeper problems in our voting system that touch-screen voting. In 2007, the State Board of Elections sent our Montgomery County Board of Elections a datbase purported to be THE accurate database (voter list) for Rockville’s election. The Montomery County Board of Elections turned it over to our City Clerk without verification. “Not our responsibility” to verify was the explanation from our MC Board. This database turned out to be a copy that the State was using for testing, so it contained errors that the State had created.Whether we use a touch screen system or an optical scan system – the RIGHT TO VOTE depends on the voting list that comes from the State Board of Elections. In 2007, they demonstrated that they were capable of providing a flat-out WRONG voting list (database).Remember – a database is just a file. The State running tests and simulations on its system is not in itself unusual – the fact that they couldn’t verify that a file was derived from a secure master file is very unusual for a supposedly secure system.This should concern people. I was very surprised that the Rockville event did not get national attention at the time, since approximately three months later we had the 2008 Presidential Primary in Maryland.