Investor's Business Daily, November 6, 2006

When Americans go to the polls Tuesday, an estimated 40% of voters will cast their ballot on a touch-screen computer, almost twice as many as in November 2002.

Election 2006 is a referendum on many things — including electronic voting systems. In 2002 and 2004, some glitches cropped up in e-voting systems. None of the problems changed any election results, but they raised serious questions about the reliability of e-voting. Those concerns have yet to be resolved, even as e-voting continues to expand.

"We have a very critical election . . . with both Houses potentially switching sides, and we've never used this much electronic voting before," said Aviel Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University and author of "Brave New Ballot: the Battle to Safeguard Democracy in the Age of Electronic Voting."

"We could see a lot of litigation coming from some losers in these races" over whether the e-voting systems were faulty or tampered with, he said.

Still, e-voting is here to stay. The rapid rise in e-voting is a result of the Help America Vote Act, a bill passed by Congress in 2002 that authorized $3.8 billion for new voting technology and training. It relegated punch-card systems to the dustbin — a result of the dangling- and dimpled-chad fiasco of the Florida vote in 2000.

E-voting critics have focused on touch-screen systems by Diebold, (DBD) the market leader. Other suppliers include Electronic Systems & Software, Sequoia Voting Systems and HartInterCivic. All have vigorously defended the technology. They've also issued upgrades or fixed problems such as software glitches.

Critics say much more needs to be done.

In September, a group of computer scientists from Princeton University published a report showing how they hacked a Diebold AccuVote-TS touch-screen system. They posted a 10-minute video online showing how they hacked the system and reversed the outcome of a mock presidential election.

Dave Byrd, president of Diebold's Diebold Election unit, said in a written response that the study was "unrealistic and inaccurate" on several levels. He said the Princeton team tested software that was two generations old and no longer used, and that the study ignored "physical security and election procedures."

The Princeton group stood by its conclusion that the AccuVote system is vulnerable to attacks.

Touch screens accounted for 29% of votes in 2004 vs. 10% in 2002.

More than one-third (38%) of voters will use them Tuesday.

About half (49%) will blacken little circles on paper ballots — like a multiple choice quiz — before feeding them into an optical scanner.

About 7% will pull mechanical levers, in use since the 1880s.

Just 0.2% will use punch cards.

Overall, the systems have performed well and complaints received could be attributed to user error, said Vince Vasquez, a policy analyst at the Pacific Research Institute. He recently co-authored a report, "Upgrading America's Ballot Box: the Rise of E-Voting."

No Fraud Yet

Several studies have said touch-screen systems are vulnerable to hackers. Internet-fed rumors and conspiracy theories of wide-scale fraud also hound the technology. There has never been a case of proven e-voting fraud, said Vasquez, but that hasn't stopped the criticism.

"Activists have tapped into the fear and paranoia to get headlines," Vasquez said. "Everyone has experienced computer problems, and without knowing how these voting machines work they will transfer their experience onto anything tech, including voting machines."

Problems that do surface with e-voting can be eye-openers.

In a 2003 election in Indiana, 144,000 votes were counted for Boone County, home to fewer than 19,000 registered voters. The problem was traced to a programming error, not fraud. It was fixed and the correct vote count was tabulated.

In the 2004 election, in Guilford County, N.C., a computer system lost thousands of early votes and absentee ballots because the total number of votes exceeded what the computer was designed to handle. So the county did a recount and came up with an additional 22,000 votes for Democrat John Kerry.

Some Youngstown, Ohio, voters said their attempts to vote for Kerry showed up on the screen as a vote for George Bush, according to the nonprofit Verified Voting Foundation.

Blazing A Paper Trail

For these and other reasons, more and more states are requiring electronic voting machines to print a paper receipt to verify results.

Not even that is an airtight solution. Even paper trail systems can be manipulated, said a study by Brennan Center Task Force. And, in Nevada, which required a paper trail in 2004, officials experienced multiple hardware problems, including paper jams and running out of ink.

Despite all the potential flaws, proponents of e-voting systems say the key benefit — when everything works right — is nearly 100% accuracy. The systems can prompt a user who over-votes and when no vote is registered. Votes are also tabulated more quickly because they don't require hand feeding of paper ballots into a reader.

Democrats have made many complaints about the systems. Analysts said that's probably because they have lost the past three big biennial elections. Those criticisms might abate if they win Tuesday, after which Republicans might howl.

"Democrats have been sensitized to the problem more so they're paying better attention," said Dan Wallach, a Rice University associate professor of computer science and author of several studies on voting systems. Wallach is also associate director of Accurate, a voting research center funded by the National Science Foundation.

A major complaint by those who've studied the matter is that the makers of election systems won't offer them to groups for study and analysis.

"I assume it's because they won't like what we have to say," Wallach said. "I want to help them and know that our voting systems are built well."

Vasquez said a critical issue that needs to be addressed is the training of poll workers on how to manage or fix problems.

"It's not the technology that's the problem; it's in the hands of those who oversee the systems," he said. "The bigger issue is that states don't take elections seriously enough. It's one of the most underfunded public services the government provides."

Brian Mitchell contributed to this article.