Senate Holds Hearing on Electronic Voting Systems
Feature Story by David Schraub - 8/8/2008
With the 2008 presidential race hovering in the background, the Senate Rules and Administration Committee held a hearing July 30 on a bipartisan election reform bill focusing on verification requirements for electronic voting systems.
The Bipartisan Electronic Voting Reform Act of 2008 is the result of a compromise between Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D. Calif., and Sen. Bob Bennett, R. Utah., after a previous bill authored by Sen. Feinstein failed to secure enough Republican support for passage. That bill required that all ballots have a "paper trail" that would be the official vote if electronic results are disputed.
The new bill, cosponsored by both senators, says that any technique can be used to record votes so long as each ballot can be independently verified. It also sets a 2012 deadline for implementing the required reforms, but would leave it up to individual states to decide what specific procedures would be used.
The bill is the latest to try to fix the country's broken voting system. After the 2000 election revealed serious problems, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) to modernize voting systems and increase public confidence that votes are accurately recorded.
However, HAVA did not address the security of computerized touch-screen voting machines, which the Feinstein bill does.
Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita testified on behalf of the National Association of Secretaries of State and praised the bill for respecting state sovereignty and giving each state the flexibility to implement verification requirements based on its own particular needs.
Much of the witness testimony focused on the feasibility of the 2012 deadline. Sen. Feinstein defended the date as necessary to motivate local agencies, and Barbara Arnwine of the Lawyers' Committee on Civil Rights Under Law said that the deadline would create a "sense of urgency."
However, Doug Lewis, executive director of the Election Center, a nonprofit membership organization of elections and voter registration officials, did not believe that all of the new technology described in the bill would be ready in time for election officials to prepare for the deadline.
In addition, James Dickson, vice president for governmental affairs of the American Association of Persons with Disabilities, said that it is likely that the businesses that make this type of voting equipment would not start investing in the new technology until they are sure there is "money on the table," which means that any serious corporate push to develop the new products will not begin until after the bill is already passed.
While a waiver that extended the deadline to 2014 would be more feasible, Lewis claimed, 2016 would be a more realistic deadline for reforms to be implemented correctly.
However, several witnesses, including Lewis and Dickson, remarked that it would be very difficult to roll out new technology in a presidential election year. Feinstein said she would explore changing the deadline so that new technology can first be used in off-year elections in 2012 and 2016.
