News
Advocate offers voting fraud solutions
By Amy Hillenburg | ahillenb@reportert.com
Saturday August 12, 2006
Cindy Hoffman said she couldn't live without her computer, but every
day finds evidence of scams in her email inbox.
Hoffman, guest speaker Wednesday at the Democracy for Morgan County
meeting, said a belief in the infallibility of computers is misplaced.
Computers are programmed by humans and are more prone to error than
people think.
" Even banks make mistakes on the computer," Hoffman
said.
Hoffman is a citizen's advocate for ending voter fraud. She teaches
physics and introduction to psychology at Indiana University. Armed
with voting facts and statistics from the Brennan Center for Justice,
Common Cause and Voters Unite, Hoffman discussed the imperfections
of electronic voting systems.
Hoffman said there are several ways Indiana counties can minimize
voting errors. She is working the polls this year and said more people
should volunteer for the experience.
"
All party members must understand that there are problems with
these Direct Recording Electronic systems (DREs), and there should
be a
bi-partisan effort to keep voting secure," Hoffman said.
To prepare for her lectures on ending voter fraud, Hoffman spoke
to poll workers who counted paper ballots, those who operated lever
voting machines and new electronic voting machines. She said she
was convinced after many conversations with election board members
and poll workers that most of them are honest and want accurate election
results.
"There is no perfect system. Maryland was one of the first states
to get DREs and then kicked that system out. Now the state has
optical scanning machines," Hoffman said.
Hoffman said 80 percent of votes in the United States are recorded
by machines made by Diebold and ES&S. "At my last count,
there were only nine companies that distribute voting machines in
the U.S," she said.
Need a visible copy
Becky Waymire, former Democratic Party chairman of Morgan County,
said voters currently use MicroVote DREs without any voter verified
paper ballots (VVPBs). She said she would like to see voters get
a printed copy of how they voted, to make sure the outcome is what
they intended. As it is, only an internal record of votes is kept,
making the system less transparent than it should be, Hoffman said.
" Make no mistake, a system can be hacked from the inside or from the
outside. Unless there is a paper trail, no one is aware that
it is happening."
In a Hoosier Times guest column by James Allison, professor emeritus,
psychology, at IU, it was stated that Oregon voters continue
to use mail-in paper ballots.Allison wrote that ballots are
counted on Election Day by optical scanner, but results aren't
released until 8 p.m., when most
votes have been counted.
A person trained in handwriting recognition compares
the signature on the outer envelope with the computerized signature
on file
from the voter registration card.Allison said election board
officials also claim it saves the state
money - it costs about 30 percent less than the polling place
system.
Hoffman said with local elections often decided by narrow margins
of a few hundred votes, verifying those numbers takes on a new
importance.
She said, "If I cast a vote for George W. Bush and John
Kerry's light comes on, I can cancel out what I did and start
over. But
what really happened? Did doing that simply remove one vote for
John Kerry,
or did it add a vote to George Bush? You can't prove the ballot
is wrong, and election officials can't prove the machine is right."
There are a few things counties can do to improve accuracy, according
to Hoffman. They can create a permanent paper record the voter
can visually inspect before casting their vote. There should
be Manual Random
Audits (MMRAs),
a hand count of paper ballots at randomly selected precincts
to ensure the machines are counting accurately.
"
Let's not pretend that cheating doesn't happen," Hoffman said. "Election
fraud is an American tradition."
For more information on solutions to voter fraud, contact the Brennen
Center for Justice at www.brennancenter.org, or call (212) 998-6730. You may also contact
Common Cause at www.commoncause.org, or call (202) 833-1200.
