Something Is Not Always Better Than Nothing

Also posted at Disabled Americans for Democracy

Note: You can still leave comments in the "Remembering Douglas Adams" thread.

In a TruthOut Report yesterday, Matt Renner discusses HR 811 (the Holt bill), an amendment to the Help America Vote Act. Voted out of the Committee on House Administration on Tuesday the bill, with its two committee-passed amendments and its 212 cosponsors, is expected to come to an early vote in the full House.

MoveOn and Common Cause, together with People For The American Way, an organization to which this blogger has been known to donate, supports this bill, on the premise that something is better than nothing. Some improvement to current voting technology must be gotten into the pipeline now, in time for the '08 elections. David Becker, PFAW's senior counsel, is quoted in the report as saying "This will not be the last piece of election reform passed in history. It is urgent that a [any?] reform bill be passed now or else it will not be ready by November, 2008."

So, apparently PFAW, who helped draft the legislation, is of the "something is better than nothing" school. Well, this voter is not. In the case of verifiable voting (as in a growing list of other cases), I'm tired of lesser weevels. If Congress is going to act, then it should do something substantive, not just wave its hands, say "Abracadabra," and pretend the problem has been magically solved.

A large and ever-growing body of evidence, amassed by Black Box Voting and others, shows that electronic voting machines in general, and DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) voting systems in particular, are vulnerable to hacking, physical tampering, simple computer failure; in short, the thousand ills that data flows are heir to. BBV has reported on human unscrupulousness with regard to the physical security of voting machines as well as the malfeasance of voting machine software manufacturers. Moreover, as Renner reports, MIT and CalTech have performed a study that shows that voters are "very unlikely to recognize errors on the paper record after their electronic ballots were completed." Somehow, I doubt that hanging signs in polling places admonishing voters "to check the paper records for errors after they complete their ballots," as mandated by the Holt bill, will cut down very much on computer-related voting problems.

Sometimes, lower tech is better. If Congress wants to institute verifiable voting, it should mandate the system used in my home town, Springfield, MA. Here, we mark paper ballots and feed them, under the watchful eyes of poll monitors, into an optical character recognition (OCR) machine to be counted. This system works admirably. It does not address the understandable desire of disabled voters to vote independently, which is a drawback. Overall, however, this system has it all over the electronic voting machines I've been reading about for years now.

I am disappointed that the organizations named above have adopted the "a solution now is preferable to the solution a little later" view on the matter of voting verifiability. This reminds me strongly of the NFB and AAPD position on accessibility; namely, security and verifiability that might be built into systems later can - and indeed should - be sacrificed for accessibility now. In the case of NFB and AAPD, they are cozy with Diebold and other manufacturers. Knowing this, and perhaps being just a touch cynical, I can't help but wonder what's in it for Common Cause, PFAW and MoveOn that they're in such an all fired hurry to get this particular legislation on the books.

Something is not always better than nothing. In this instance, it is not. Secure, accessible, verifiable voting shouldn't be fudged, or rushed. If Congress is going to do it, they owe it to the citizenry to do it right. At the same time, those organizations, and legislators, who have ties to or are otherwise influenced by the voting machine companies have an obligation to state these connections clearly, so voters know exactly where every voice in the debate is coming from.

It may be that PFAW and the others have no strings leading back to Diebold et al, and are acting in good faith. After all, it is true that action on voting systems can't wait. But, if so, they and all other organizations with an interest in such matters, like NFB and AAPD, should cooperate and collectively support a thorough, lasting solution to the problem. A stopgap measure such as the Holt bill, like HAVA itself, wil simply generate further problems and further inadequate patches.

Alt Comment Link