New Jersey
Star Ledger editorial on voting paper trails
Reassess voting update
Modernizing the voting system is proving to be more
complicated and
costly than anticipated when the idea was discussed seriously after the
2000 presidential election. That's the one that made hanging chads the
topic of casual conversations and exposed just how inexact ballot
counting is.
To prevent a repeat, lawmakers in
And as with just about any government program, once the politicians and
bureaucrats got involved, it got even more complicated and costly.
That's not to say that voting machines designed in the late 1800s, as
the lever machines were, shouldn't be decommissioned and replaced with
computerized touch screens. But in their rush to ensure the integrity of
voting, politicians outran technology and bypassed common sense. It's
time for a reassessment.
The confusion starts with a series of state and federal laws written in
legislative vacuums. They all establish deadlines. First is a January
2006 federal deadline for counties to buy new election machines and get
rid of the lever and punch card systems. The law, enacted in 2002, seems
simple enough and comes with federal money to subsidize the buying.
All the counties except
now have voting machines that comply with the 2006 regulations. But the
state Attorney General's Office, which handles election matters, says
the five counties are on their way to doing so by the January deadline.
Most counties opted for machines that display a whole ballot on one
screen and allow voters to cast ballots simply by touching a candidate's
name.
But then questions were raised about the integrity of the machines and
the possibility of tampering. So a
sets a January 2008 deadline for all voting machines also to have a
paper record.
Here's the catch. No machine certified for use in
capability of producing a paper record. To comply with the 2008
deadline, the state's 10,000 voting machines, all designed to meet the
2006 deadline, will have to be retrofitted with a paper printing device.
The cost will be $2,000 each.
And once the printers are attached, each machine will have to be
recertified by the state. There's some question whether all this can be
done by 2008. But even if it could, is it worth it?
It seems the 2008 law was designed to address a problem that doesn't
exist. For as long as most can remember, counties used lever machines,
and none of those came with a paper record. Problems arose from time to
time and were resolved.
Several counties have been using the new touch screen machines for a few
years, and there have been no widespread cases of fraud or tampering.
The Attorney General's Office says the computerized voting machines
operate individually. There is no overall network that hackers can tap
into to change results.
Complying with the 2008 deadline will cost the state about $20 million
for technology still being developed.
The Legislature ought to rethink the demand for a voting paper trail.
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