Heller touts Nevada voting system in Washington

Suzanne Struglinski

Thursday, Dec. 9, 2004 | 9:50 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Nevada's success with new electronic voting technology has made it a case-study for election reform advocates.

Although not flawless, lawmakers and advocates will use the statewide experiment that combined electronic "touch-screen" voting along with a paper printout to show other members of Congress and the rest of the country what the system can accomplish.

Secretary of State Dean Heller spoke to a standing-room only crowd in the nation's capital Tuesday regarding Nevada's experience with the paper trail machines. Audience members cheered when he told them of his decision last year to get rid of punch card machines and his insistence to voting machine vendors that a paper record option was possible.

Heller said every county election official objected to the decision until they tried the machine.

"I'm not saying we have built the perfect mousetrap," Heller said, acknowledging the system had flaws but emphasizing Nevada had better recount options than states that had not adopted the paper record along with electronic voting.

Next year, Congress will decide whether to reauthorize its ability to give money to the states to implement the Help America Vote Act, a law aimed at fixing problems with how the country votes. Nevada received roughly $16.2 million through the act, $5.8 million in 2003 and $10.4 million in 2004 to help with new voting efforts.

As data analyzing votes cast on Nov. 2 trickle in from various groups, the reauthorization debate could include request for other changes.

Heller said Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., told him any post-election vote analysis conference could not be done without Nevada's presence because of its unique status as the only state using electronic voting machines with paper ballots.

Holt introduced a bill in 2003 that would have required a "voter-verified paper record" that could be used to audit election voting results, an idea that could be brought up again when Congress start over in January.

Holt said he would use Nevada "all the time" as an example of a system that works and what could be done nationally.

"The rest of the country can be reassured that this kind of system can work for them," Holt said. "Nevada has shown you can do it."

He said Nevada's success proved that objections states could raise about paperwork or compliance issues could be managed.

The quick end to last month's presidential election compared to drawn out recount phase following the 2000 election should not lead people to believe there were no problems with voting, election watchdog groups said at a conference in Washington Tuesday.

Common Cause, the Century Foundation and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and other election reform and voting rights groups listed numerous problems with voter registration, access to polls, ballots and other Election Day components.

Common Cause wants to see improvement in voting technology and a voter-verified paper trail required with all electronic voting machines, according to "Report from the Voters: A First Look at 2004 Election Data," a special report completed this month.

But Nevada's system has some key flaws that should not be mimicked, said Ted Selker, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Selker is the co-chairman of the MIT/Caltech voting project that is looking at computer voting systems.

Voters were not looking at the paper printouts to make sure their votes were cast correctly, said Selker, who monitored some polling places in northern Nevada during the September primary. He said they would just glance at the print out and move on.

He also took issue with the lack of security on the ballot boxes and paper rolls, particularly when there was a paper jam. He showed photos of one poll worker manually changing a paper roll unwatched. He wanted better security and more accountability for those watching the polls.

"I have yet to find a system where voting officials can't change votes," he said.

Selker would rather see an audio record versus a paper record. His system would play back a person's choices via a recording into his or her ear and then cast the ballot.