Dr. Rubin,

I do respect your expertise and views.   In my 34 years of public service, I've never met an election official in California who would be willing to go to jail to allegedly manipulate an election for someone running for office.  And the conspiracy that would have to occur would be next-to-impossible given all the safeguards and people involved, as well as, the scrutiny from candidates, political parties and the media.  Rather, having worked in a variety of management roles in the public sector, election administrators at the local level who actually conduct elections are among the most honest, dedicated and conscientious public servants I've had the pleasure of working with.   You may have observed some of that in the jurisdiction in which you volunteered to serve on election day.   Fortunately, in a democracy, we have the freedom to choose.  As I'm sure is the case with you and others, we research the records of a given product before selecting that manufacturer; and the same is true of DRE voting systems.   We chose a model that has successfully served Riverside County.  

I have an optimism, borne of experience, that these voting systems will continually improve and serve our nation even more effectively than our paper-based predecessors...as they already have for many years without the cost and complexity of redundant paper.   I also share your faith in technology and the ways in which it can help all of us "work smarter" in every facet of our professional and personal lives.

Kim,

While we can differ, respectfully, in our views about the performance of DRE electronic voting systems, and perceptions start to take a life of their own, there is one issue that remains to be ignored by the most vociferous of skeptics; i.e. that DRE voting systems are actually tested at the federal, state and local levels, as well as certified before a county can purchase them, while the vast majority of our electoral systems in this nation which will be counting the vote on November 2nd have never been subjected to any federal standards or state testing/certification. That is because they have been in use for 30 or more years and were grandfathered in. Yet, why do they work? It is because of the people involved, their passionate commitment to serve the public and countless hours of sacrifice on long evenings, holidays and weekends when others are enjoying their "time off" to ensure the integrity of the vote. Are human mistakes occasionally made? Yes, those will occur because of increasing volumes of work, reduced deadlines by the Legislature for key elements of the process, scarce resources for manpower due to competing budget priorities at the local level, widely varying skills and retention capabilities by volunteers, and overlapping requirements among others.

However, you don't castigate the machine when a fallible human makes an unintentional error, as our voters do too often, despite our effort to provide clear instructions. You would be amazed at how many paper absentee ballots we are unable to count because voters place them in the mail on Election Day, don't sign the envelope, or even return blank ballots out of protest for their view of candidates. You won't find perfection in those involved on Election Day, but DRE voting systems do perform extremely well with the proper management, training, testing and procedural requirements in place. Thankfully, the government does not ban all automobiles when one model has a recall notice. You fix the problem and move on.

Scott,

You wrote:

This redefinition of issues into technological terms is reductionist and arguably in some cases is posing greater risks to the election process as a whole. For example, for nearly a year California election officials at both the state and county have been consumed by the debate about voting technology to such an extent that the other equally substantive issues and mandates of HAVA have been virtually ignored. When well-meaning fixation on an important, yet tiny part of the election process jeopardizes the whole, the system is out of balance. When exclusive claims to knowledge (i.e. technical knowledge) are made, the discussion becomes dogmatic and not rational.

My response:

I agree with you that other substantive issues related to elections have been largely ignored by the public over the last year as the debate about the integrity of voting systems has dominated discussions. But this discussion has come about largely because many election officials didn't want to entertain the idea that there could be anything wrong with the systems. You and I discussed this in Washington, D.C., last month and you agreed that had election officials reacted more openly a year ago, the firestorm would likely not have erupted and this focus on voting systems would not have taken the course it did.

As for voting systems being only a tiny part of the election process, I'll have to disagree if by this you mean to suggest that it shouldn't have any more importance than other parts of the process. All of the procedures in the world can't make up for a system that malfunctions on Election Day in a way that loses or misrecords votes. Yes there are other problems with the elections process that can just as seriously disenfranchise voters and alter an election outcome, but that doesn't mean we should diminish the importance of having secure voting systems.

You wrote:

At this point in time in the election cycle, there is no constructive value in perpetuating the debate. Election officials are conducting the election with the tools that they have. To continue discrediting these tools serves only to actively undermine the legitimacy of the election before a vote has been counted. To deride and malign election officials who are working tirelessly with the tools they have to conduct a transparent, fair and accurate election to the best of their ability in November serves no positive goal. It is a fair question to ask the motive of those who do either.

My response:

If by "no constructive value" you mean that talking about it at this point can't change anything before the November election, I agree in the sense that we can't replace the current voting systems at this point or alter the software to make it more secure. But I think there is always constructive value in debate. If the debate can't change things this round, it can certainly help change things for the next round. We shouldn't refrain from discussing problems just because there's currently little that anyone can do about them.

As for the hard work of election officials, I've never doubted that. Nor do I doubt that election officials are trying to do the best job that they can. I served as a poll worker in my county recently (a county that uses touch-screen voting machines) and was impressed by how well oiled and coordinated the process was after the polls closed. My discussion of voting systems isn't meant to be a criticism of how well election officials do their job. It has to do with a certification process that doesn't seem capable of detecting a poorly designed system and it has to do with the lack of oversight and uniformity of election procedures that would help ensure the integrity of elections so that if someone disputes the results after an election is over, there is a clearly delineated, uniform, and independent process for proving that an election was accurate. When I say independent I mean some independent means for conducting a recount that doesn't rely on the same software that counted the initial results.

You wrote:

As in all elections, one's view of this election's success or failure will be determined more by one's personal preferences than any objective, professional, scientific or academic expertise.

My response:

If machines malfunction on Election Day and votes are lost as a result (which I don't think will happen, but it's certainly possible), that's a pretty objective scenario for measuring the success or failure of the election in that particular precinct. But if by this you mean that some critics will never be satisified, I think you may be right about this. There is an element in the activist community that will continue to criticize no matter what is done to make elections more secure. But I don't think we should stop listening to everyone because a few will never be satisfied.

Opponents of electronic voting machines are engaged in a common practice in criticizing technology systems, called "moving the goalposts". If the comparison is made between existing voting systems in common use, electronic voting systems win hands down. They are also clearly more reliable, easier to use, and offer new benefits--making it possible for the handicapped to vote without assistance, for example.

Paper-based systems, including the systems David mentions, have obvious flaws: for example, one can never be sure that one's vote will actually be counted, even assuming it is not damaged, defaced, or lost. A small error in filling out the form could lead to the entire form being invalidated on technical grounds. This is why election monitors from both parties are employed to ensure fairness.

Opponents of electronic voting systems have to reach in the direction of conspiracies to justify their apprehension, since without a hacker or corporate conspirator working behind the scenes there is no way an electronic voting system could be less reliable than a paper-based system. But no one has shown how a hacker or conspirator could successfully pull off a deception without being stopped by the conventional security applied to all voting systems, or by the additional digital security offered by electronic voting systems, or being detected because of a discrepancy with exit polls.

Jon Webb

Pittsburgh, PA

For anyone who may be interested, Wired News moderated a panel discussion on e-voting last week for the Commonwealth Club and there is a recording of the discussion available here: