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No conspiracy needed to support paper trail

By HOWARD TROXLER
Published March 8, 2006

Since the 2004 election, an energetic and mostly Democratic group of folks has alleged (1) the election was rigged and (2) we need better safeguards for our electronic voting machines.

As long as we are putting questions (1) and (2) together, we are going nowhere.

Mainstream America is not going to buy the conspiracy theory unless President Bush gets caught on tape saying, "Me and Diebold stole the election, heh, heh."

Neither does the conspiracy theory give Republicans (who, after all, are the majority in our Legislature) much room to support better safeguards. Republicans have been forced by default to defend the touch-screen machines used in 15 Florida counties.

So where we go from here depends on the goal.

If the goal is for Democrats to keep on accusing Republicans of stealing the last election, and Republicans to keep on calling Democrats sore losers and nutbags, then we don't need to do anything else.

But if the goal is to get better safeguards in place for Florida's voting machines, then we have to make it possible for the rest of us, Republican, Democrat and everybody else, to get behind it.

As time passes, Republicans will realize they have the same things at stake as Democrats when it comes to electronic voting.

I am sorry to keep using Hillary Clinton as a bugaboo. But imagine her winning the White House in 2008 by a razor's edge, in a single key state, on the basis of a few Democratic counties with suspicious electronic results.

Then you would see our Republican brothers and sisters crying out for a paper trail! And it would be an irony of ironies if this fall's governor's race in Florida went to the Democrats in a close race decided in touch-screen counties.

There are role-reversals already. This week the governor of Maryland, a Republican, called for abandoning that state's $90-million touch-screen voting system, according to the Washington Post. You know who's opposing him? The Democrats. They say he's just trying to foul up early voting.

We do not have to believe in conspiracy theories to support better safeguards. Personally I have been skeptical of conspiracy claims (see Internet post-election rumors missing one little thing: evidence, Nov. 11, 2004).

Neither is supporting a paper trail a criticism of our three local county supervisors using touch-screens, Deborah Clark in Pinellas, Buddy Johnson in Hillsborough or Kurt Browning in Pasco.

(As you can see in an article in today's paper about Tuesday night's election, there are sometimes vote-counting problems, but that's true no matter what kind of machines are used.)

I believe the local supervisors have good procedures in place. Yet no matter what precautions are taken locally, there are only two ways to know for sure that no one has tinkered with the machines on the front end:

(1) Have an entirely public, transparent process of programming the machines before each election. The companies refuse to let that happen.

(2) Have a verifiable paper trail, such as an optical-scan ballot or other printed result that could be used in a recount.

Just handing the voter a take-home receipt doesn't allow for a recount, and it encourages vote-buying. Besides, the receipt could still say one thing and the voting machine another.

There are two remaining objections to a voter-verifiable ballot. One is that no such system is certified for use in Florida yet. But the Secretary of State's office says it is working with such a vendor to get it up to Florida standards.

The last objection is a doozy - switching would cost a bundle, many tens of millions. Counties such as Pinellas, already cutting deep into their schools and other vital programs, can't and won't pay for it.

On the other hand, at this very moment, the Florida Legislature is trying to figure out the best use of a one-time, $3-billion-plus surplus. Hmm....

[Last modified March 8, 2006, 18:31:07]