In the United States, state and local authorities are in charge of

voting and the country uses more than a half dozen different voting technologies.

As a result, the country can’t guarantee that it accurately counts national votes

in a timely fashion. This article discusses the problem and potential solutions to the U.S. voting dilemma.



This map shows some of the major voting technologies in use today:

Courtesy: VerifiedVoting.org

This

interactive map lets you drill down to see all the state and county

level technologies in use.

Because of the different technologies and the dispersed

responsibility model, the country can’t accurately count votes

in a timely fashion. The close election of 2000 highlighted the issue.

The country voted for Democratic candidate Al Gore over Republican

George W. Bush by a margin of 50,999,897 to 50,456,002 — so far as

could be determined,

with almost two

million

votes disqualified. But the popular vote doesn’t decide the victor in

the U.S.. The electoral vote does. (For those unfamiliar with this

system, individuals vote for electors in their state pledged to vote

for the candidate of their choice in the Electoral

College.

The U.S. presidential election thus actually consists of 51

separate elections for electors (50 states plus the District of

Columbia). All but two states hold winner-take-all contests — they

award 100% of their electors to the candidate in their state who gets

the most popular votes.)

In the 2000 election, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately decided

the election in candidate Bush’s favor a full two months

after polls closed by stopping vote recounts in the critical state of

Florida. The court essentially declared candidate Bush the winner in

Florida, which gave him all 25 of that state’s electors and a 271 to

266 victory in the Electoral College. Most studies

since the election have concluded that candidate Bush actually lost

both the popular and electoral votes.

This fiasco prompted Congress to pass the Help America

Vote Act

(HAVA) in 2002. HAVA’s goal was to improve voting accuracy through

modernization. But it failed, largely because it left implementation

choices up to the states. The result is that voting technology remains

non-standardized today, as the above map shows. Long lines and waiting

times are still a problem.

And — unforgivably — accuracy is still in question.

Here’s an example from last Tuesday’s election. A voter pressed a touch

screen for candidate Obama and the machine changed his vote to

candidate Romney. The voter was a software engineer who captured the

problem on

video and provided this

description of his experience. The issue seemed to be

miscalibration

of some machines. Separately, the Republican National Committee sent a letter

to election officials in six states alledging that voting machines

incorrectly counted Romney votes for Obama. Meanwhile all sorts of lawsuits

are ongoing.

Some have urged the U.S. to go to all-electronic voting. Or even to

Internet voting. (Be modern, like many European countries!)

The sticking point is that computerized systems need to be verifiable,

both by the voter and election officials. Most computer scientists argue

that only “evidence-based systems” can prevent stolen

elections in the United States. As Bruce Schneier explains,

“Computer

security experts are unanimous on what to do… DRE [Direct Record

Electronic] machines must have a voter-verifiable paper audit trail

and… Software used on DRE machines must be open to public scrutiny.”





I agree. U.S. history

is filthy with attempts to steal elections. And the country remains a

politically contentious place. Right now, for example, up to 25%

of the public believes their current president is legally not an

American citizen, as required by law to hold the office. They’re called

“birthers.” You can

see why evidence-based voting systems are needed in the U.S..

Courtesy: Wikipedia and WND.com

How about an example where some attempt to distort democracy and the

voting process? Look no further than the ongoing nationwide

effort to limit voting through restrictive voter ID laws. Evidence

indicates very, very few incidents of people committing vote fraud in

this manner. Yet politicians are using this as the excuse

to limit participation among voter demographics they believe do not

favor

them. Trusting such politicians with any voting mechanism that doesn’t

produce a physical audit trail is folly.

There’s another approach to solving U.S. voting problems. It relies not

on

technology but on altering the voting procedure. Eliminate the

electoral system and implement direct voting for president. This has

two advantages. First, no candidate could win the office while losing

the popular vote (as has happened 4

times in 57

presidential elections). Second, the nearly 120 million votes cast

nationwide reduces the chance of a winner whose margin of victory lies

within the range of vote count inaccuracy. Unfortunately, eliminating

the Electoral College requires a constitutional amendment and is highly

unlikely.

Will the U.S. ever get its voting act together? Don’t hold your breath.

Dispersed responsibility for the voting process among state and local

governments prevents standardization. (The U.S. doesn’t even have a

national ID.) And the laws passed in response

to the debacle of 2000 didn’t fix the problem, although some progress

has

been made. Meanwhile there’s little possibility of eliminating the

electoral system and the cynical effort to restrict voting continues.

Is this how a modern democracy should vote?

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Howard Fosdick (President, FCI) is an independent consultant who

supports databases and operating systems. Read his other articles here.