March 5, 2007- The Iowa General Assembly is considering legislation to require a voter-verified paper record for all voting machines used in the state.  We welcome this as a significant first step toward verified elections.

However, there is a cumbersome and problematic way to implement this goal, or a more practical and reliable way.

First, the cumbersome way: "Paper Trails." We can add printers to our touchscreen direct recording electronic recording, or "DRE," machines. DRE machines are the primary method of voting in 18 counties, and are in partial use in 60 counties.  The paper printout would be stored after the election, and votes on the printout would serve as the ballots of record in an audit or a recount.

Sound good?  Governments and verified voting advocates have learned some lessons about the paper-trail printers: the voter-verified paper records are on a continuous reel of flimsy, thermal paper, and the reels are quite difficult to recount by hand compared to paper ballots. 

The printers used for the DRE touchscreens have lost votes due to printer jams, as demonstrated in Guilford County, North Carolina in the November 2006 election, in Cuyahoga County, Ohio in the May 2006 primary election, and in testing done in California in 2005.  What's more, new federal legislation could ban the flimsy paper printers and require a durable paper ballot for all voting systems.

Finally, routine hand audits are essential to verified elections, even with paper ballots,so it is best to choose the system most most efficient for hand counting.

Flimsy paper, painstaking recounts or audits of "cash-register" rolls, crumpled and lost votes. Is that what voters think when they think of verified voting?

The better option: Paper Ballots and Optical Scanners.  Iowa could replace the DRE touchscreens with paper ballot scanners. To serve voters with vision or other disabilities, each polling place could also offer a ballot-marking device, or "BMD."  The ballot-marking device might be a touchscreen device, like the Automark used in over 20 Iowa counties.

Instead of recording votes, the ballot-marking device is used to mark the same kind of paper ballot all voters use.  With the Automark, a blank paper ballot is inserted into the machine, and a voter can use the touchscreen to make her choices, which are then marked onto the ballot. The ballot can be ejected into a privacy sleeve, so a pollworker can assist a voter with dexterity disabilities in removing the ballot without compromising the voter's privacy.

Legislators are aware of the problems with the printer reels, and would prefer to go the route of paper ballots and ballot-marking devices for voters with disabilities. Proposed amendments to House Study Bill 178, and Senate Study Bill 1104 would phase out the DRE touchscreens. Note: the amended text of these bills is not yet online at the General Assembly web site. Click here to see the amendment from which the legislators are now working.

When a county sought to replace a touchscreen DRE, the county would have to buy ballot scanners and BMDs instead. In the meantime, the touchscreen DREs would have the problematic paper printers added on to them until the machines are eventually replaced.

Legislators in both parties would prefer to switch out the DREs now. The issue is cost. To replace the touchscreens with paper ballot systems now could cost as much as $8-10 million.  Adding the very inadequate paper trail printers would cost over $1 million.  So they are leaning toward the cheaper option for the short run, and slowly phasing in the real solution.  We believe that when the state has a budget surplus in the hundreds of millions of dollars, $8-10 million is a good value for reliable voting systems. Plus, why spend $1 million on an option that will have to be replaced anyway?

TAKE ACTION

Here's where you can help. Contact your legislator, members of the House and Senate leadership, the Appropriations Committees, and Governor Culver.
Tell them that  investing now in paper ballot systems is the wisest choice for Iowa .  Urge them to provide full funding to replace DRE touchscreens with ballot scanners and ballot-marking devices.