Michael Nutt, Voice of the Nation's Blind

December 1, 2004

 The 2004 elections have come and gone. One of the most notable features of these elections was the widespread use of electronic voting machines, as approximately 30% of the U.S. electorate used them during this election.

  After the dreadful experience of the 2000 election in Florida, which was ultimately decided in the courts, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (also known as HAVA) to try to mitigate some of the glaring deficiencies that surfaced in that election.

One of the provisions of HAVA called for replacement of old punch card and lever voting machines, and also required the new machines to be accessible to the blind and visually impaired “in a manner that provides the same opportunity for access and participation (including privacy and independence) as for other voters”. While the law did not require the new machines to be purchased in time for the 2004 elections, some jurisdictions went ahead with the purchase of direct recording electronic voting machines (also known as DREs), using the monies allocated under the act.

There were many reasons that officials felt DREs were optimal choices. They eliminate “overvoting”, where voters cast too many votes in a race; they can handle many different types of ballots easily; and they are much more accessible to voters who cannot use printed ballots. (See our story on the experience of one blind voter using a Braille overlay here .) Voters who have used the touch screen machines also find them much easier to use than other sorts of voting machines. Election officials appreciate the significant reduction in spoiled ballots and the improved ease of administration.

There were many groups who felt that the machines that were purchased were inadequate, and that there were serious issues with the accuracy and/or security of these machines. Many reports were issued on all sides of the issue, and there were several lawsuits brought in the months leading up to the election. (For a more complete look at the lawsuits involved on all election-related issues, please see Electionline.org’s Litigation Update (PDF document).)

The effects of the reports and the lawsuits were mixed. In Maryland, the State Board of Elections commissioned a review of the Diebold AccuVote-TS system they had purchased, and made several security fixes to address some of the concerns raised by Dr. Avi Rubin and others in a widely-publicized study of some early versions of the operating code found on an unsecured server. A lawsuit brought by the group TrueVoteMD in April, 2004, was unsuccessful in blocking the use of the DREs in Maryland, and the court found that the state of Maryland had used due caution in implementing the voting system. In Ohio, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell ruled against the adoption of DREs for the 2004 elections, and required the counties that had planned to use them to use their old equipment instead. In California, Secretary of State Kevin Shelley required that counties using DREs give voters the option of demanding paper ballots instead.

SO WHAT HAPPENED?

The race for president turned out to be a close race in the Electoral College, although not as close as the race in 2000. The election was ultimately decided by a margin of approximately 130,000 votes in Ohio, and John Kerry conceded defeat. Overall turnout was significantly higher than 2000, and many polling places reported long lines. DREs were the focus of a great deal of attention in the media and in academia.

Many of the predictions about the advantages of DREs came true. In Georgia, for instance, Secretary of State Cathy Cox claimed that the improvement in accuracy ensured that over 103,000 additional Georgia ballots were properly counted this year. “This new data makes clear that the adoption of a modern system of electronic voting dramatically improved the accuracy of the vote count in Georgia,” said Secretary Cox. The Miami Herald noted that the number of spoiled ballots in counties that adopted touch screen voting machines dropped dramatically, even though the overall number of ballots had spiked sharply upward. In many jurisdictions, voters expressed satisfaction with the ease of using electronic voting machines, with some estimates running as high as 90% voter satisfaction. Many disabled voters found themselves able to cast independent secret ballots for the first time ever, finding it a profoundly moving experience. (For more on the experiences of blind voters with voting, please see our companion story .)

There were also some significant problems noted. In Carteret County, North Carolina, an improperly programmed machine lost nearly 4,000 early votes. A machine in Ohio initially reported over 3,000 more votes cast for President George Bush than there were voters using that specific machine, but later analysis of the voting cartridge could not reproduce the problem. In the 9th Congressional District in Indiana, some voters who used the straight Democratic option had their votes recorded improperly by an optical-scan tabulator, and a recount is underway. There were numerous reports of DREs that recorded votes opposite the intent of the voter, and in some cases, required the intervention of poll workers to correct. Machines were reported to have left some candidates off ballots, and other machines were reported to have crashed during the election. The Election Incident Reporting System reported more than 1,800 “machine problems” on Election Day, with nearly 900 of those problems relating to electronic voting.

Still, the problems reported were not considered nearly so drastic as the issues in Florida in 2000, and a report released by the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project (PDF document) found no correlation between the use of electronic voting machines and any sort of skewed voting patterns. The report said, in part, “We conclude that there is no evidence, based on exit polls, that electronic voting machines were used to steal the election for President Bush.” While some critics insisted that the election had actually been stolen, with a variety of fanciful theories, others ranging from Salon Magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle to presidential candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich all decried those suppositions. While the 2004 election was not viewed as fatally flawed, all observers agreed that there is still much ground to be covered in reforming the system to assure voters that future elections would truly reflect the will of the people.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Voting is an essential element of American democracy. It is a part of our lives that too many of us take for granted, and we only pay attention to it when something goes dreadfully wrong, as it did in Florida in 2000. The NFB has worked diligently with Congress in the passage of the Help America Vote Act, and with the makers of electronic voting machines to make them accessible to the blind. Our work is not yet complete, however.

Accessible voting machines are finally a reality. The Automark (demonstrated in this issue) and many other voting machines accessible to the blind are finally in production, while the laws of our nation require the states to purchase accessible machines and make the entire process of voting accessible to the blind. The machines are only part of the system, though. There are many parts to the voting system, ranging from voter registration procedures, to election procedures, to the security and verifiability of the ballots once they have been cast. Not only must the system work, it must be seen to work, and it must have the confidence of all voters.

Many states have started requiring voter-verifiable audit trails. While in theory this could be done without paper, in reality, proponents of such audit trails argue, with some survey data to back them up, that the majority of voters in the country would not have faith in a system that lacked a paper audit trail. We are confronted with the reality that paper audit trails will be with us for the foreseeable future. Laws requiring them are now on the books in California, Nevada, and Ohio, to name only a few, and there are strong sentiments for such laws in many other states.

The NFB does not oppose such paper trails in principle, but we insist that they must be just as accessible to the blind as they are to sighted voters. All reputable advocates of paper trails agree with our position, and have stated their agreement, although perhaps not as vociferously as we might have liked. Nonetheless, it is still there, not just in the statements of groups like the California Voter Foundation, the League of Women Voters, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and VerifiedVoting.org, but also in the laws of our nation and of many of the individual states within it. Where state laws and regulations do not provide for the means of verification to be accessible to the blind, we must make sure they are changed to reflect that imperative.

Most advocates who are concerned about voting agree that the American election system is in dire need of reform, and not just in the technology employed in the voting booth. In the NFB, our primary concern is that we preserve the right for the blind to cast our ballots independently and in secret; however, we should not stand in the way of voting reforms that do not conflict with that goal, and we should bear in mind that all voters have the right to know that the system insures that all votes are counted properly. We must continue to be vigilant and active in making sure that the promises of the Help America Vote Act are fulfilled. In particular, we need to fulfill the promise made to blind voters, that they will be able to cast their votes independently, and in secret. This will require funding, in order to improve the infrastructure of the election system , and this will require study, in order to discover what voting technology will best serve our needs. This will require determination, in order to make sure that our representatives do not take the easy way out, as they have done so many times before.

Each state is currently studying its plan to modernize its voting system. Some are further along than others. We will continue to monitor their progress, with the help of our members, affiliates, and divisions, and we will continue to push the officials to do the right thing for the blind while supporting reforms that will be beneficial to all voters. We need to stay informed, and to keep the pressure on our local officials to keep working. Each of us should contact our state’s Board of Elections to find out its plan for HAVA implementation, and check with our local Board of Elections to make sure that our local poll workers are being properly trained.

The blind, like all voters, have a right to a secret ballot, and we now have the means actually to wield it. We must now make sure that this right is incorporated into the continuing reform efforts to provide an accurate and secure election for all voters.