E-mail a friendLawrence D. Norden
original airdate July 25, 2007
An expert in voting technology and legislative reform, Lawrence D. Norden is counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice at his alma mater, NYU's School of Law. He's the lead author of The Machinery of Democracy, an account of the hazards of electronic voting in the 21st century, and a contributor to the forthcoming Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties. Norden is also an adjunct faculty member at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and editor-in-chief of ReformNY, a blog on New York State.
Lawrence D. Norden
Tavis: Lawrence D. Norden is an attorney at NYU's Brennan Center for Justice who heads up the center's voting technology assessment project. His book is called "The Machinery of Democracy: Protecting Elections in an Electronic World." He joins us tonight from New York. Larry, nice to have you on the program.
Lawrence D. Norden: Thanks for having me here, Tavis.
Tavis: Let me start with a question that might be a bit unorthodox, but every time I find myself in one of these conversations about protecting the right to vote - the most fundamental and central right to a democracy - I'm always blown away about how difficult this process seems to be. So we can put men on the Moon and circle the orbit of the world and etc., etc., and we can't figure out a way to protect the right to vote. Am I, like, naive here? Am I being stuck on stupid? Is there a game being played? I quite frankly don't get it.
Norden: Yeah, it's a very good question and a very good point, and I think part of the problem that we have in the United States is we just don't spend enough money on election administration. We've gone through a dramatic change in the United States in the way we vote. In 2006, 90 percent of people voted on electronic voting machines. A few years ago, really, nobody was voting on them.
And yet in the past few years that we've done this, we've spent less money on that transformation, which is historic, than we spend in a single year on maintaining ATM machines. So that's really part of what the problem is. So in the book, what we're saying is there's bad news, which is we've identified a lot of problems with these voting systems, reasons that they are more insecure than they should be, reasons that we continue to have problems with their reliability. The good news is there are some very clear, relatively easy fixes to make these machines more secure and to protect the right to vote.
Tavis: Let me start, then, with the point you made a moment ago, which is that we don't spend enough money. Tell me, then - because everybody who has a problem in America suggests that money is a solution. I'm not arguing that you're wrong about that, but tell me in this instance, with regard to this problem, that is, how money would make this problem go away.
Norden: Well, there are a couple of really, I think, simple steps. One of the most basic things that we can do is not only require - there's been a big debate in electronic voting about whether or not we should have what are called voter-verified paper records - some record that's independent of the electronic voting machines that voters can look at and say, “Yes, this is how I vote;” so they don't feel that their vote has disappeared into a black box.
And that's important. Just as important is using those paper records to check what is in that box. To check the electronic tally, look at some small percentage of the paper records and say, “I'm now confident in what the voting machine is telling me are the results.”
Now that costs a little bit of money - it'll cost some money to get these paper records for our voting systems that don't have them, and there are a few states that still don't have independent paper records, and it's going to cost some money to hire workers - poll workers - to check those records. But that's a relatively simple thing to do, and it will provide us with a tremendous amount of extra confidence in the results of our elections.
Tavis: Tell me about the role that government regulation plays or does not play with regard to this issue and the solutions that you raise in the text to the problems that now exist.
Norden: Well, there's a real role for government, and I think there's a role for federal government. And some of the debate that we've been having in the country and that we're having in Congress right now about this issue is should this be something that's left to counties and states, or should the federal government have a role?
And what I would say is that there is a role for the federal government to play to ensure that there is some basic level that we all get, all across the country, no matter where we are, no matter what local government we have. No matter who we're represented by, we have a minimum level of security and reliability in voting machines, we have a minimum level of access to voting systems, so that we can be relatively assured that our votes are going to be counted accurately.
Tavis: Tell me about, from your perspective - talk to me about the politicization of this process. And I raise that because every time I look up, or certainly with regularity I look up and I read another article or see another conversation about who owns these machines, who services the machines, who stands the most to benefit when the machines screw up. Talk to me about the politics of the machinery of our democracy.
Norden: Well, you're raising an interesting point. I think we do have this issue in the United States now where there is a certain level of privatization of our elections. Election officials are very much reliant on vendors not just when they purchase their equipment but whenever anything goes wrong.
Because this equipment has become so complicated in many ways, they're very much reliant on the vendors to make sure that things are going right with the voting systems in the future. That sometimes means that they may be reluctant to talk about problems when they happen because they're going to need them in the future.
Tavis: How far away are we from living in a country where we are going to be fully automated when it comes to voting?
Norden: Well, I think we have to be careful. I think there is a natural desire to think technology can solve everything, and I think if we learned anything from this transformation in the United States in the past few years, after 2000 where we thought technology was going to solve every problem, we've come to realize that technology won't solve every problem.
And we need to make sure that before we automate everything in voting that we have the right procedures in place. And we never want a situation where we are completely reliant on software for telling us election results, and for running our elections. We always are going to need the human element to double-check our voting results and to make sure that there aren't software bugs or programming errors or other kinds of problems with our machinery that may have resulted in Americans being disenfranchised.
Tavis: How is this issue being dealt with differently in Congress, if at all, now than, say, a couple of years ago? And I raise that because a couple of years ago, Republicans, of course, were running both Houses of Congress. Now the Democrats run both Houses of Congress. No matter who's running Congress, we have a major election, as you well know, set for 2008. How is the conversation about these issues different now than a year or so ago if, in fact, it's different at all?
Norden: Well, it is a little bit different. Some of it may have to do with the change in leadership in Congress between the parties. But I think just as much it's changed because there's a growing consensus among experts who have looked at this issue that there really is a problem with the machinery of our democracy, with the voting systems that we're using, that we made this transformation from lever and punch card machines to electronic machines so quickly and didn't put the right procedures in place that we left our systems vulnerable.
And there is a bipartisan - I want to say there's a bipartisan recognition of this in Congress. So, there are bills that are pending in Congress now to take steps to make these voting systems more secure, and for the most part there are both Republican and Democratic members that are co-sponsoring them. I would say that Democrats have really pushed this issue in 2006 since they took control of Congress, so there has been a change in that respect.
But at the same time there is definitely a bipartisan aspect to this, and as the experts who have looked at this - the computer scientists, the voting systems security experts - have come back to Congress and there were a number of hearings in 2005, before the Democrats took control of the Congress. And certainly since Democrats have taken control of Congress, there have been a number more hearings with experts coming to testify before Congress and telling them that this is a real problem, that something has to be done.
I think the more Congress members hear that, the more it becomes clear to them that something has to be done. And the fact of the matter is whether you're a Republican or you're a Democrat, you want to make sure that the votes that you're supposed to be receiving are actually recorded. So it really shouldn't be a partisan issue.
Tavis: His name is Lawrence D. Norden, he's one of the co-authors of the new book, "The Machinery of Democracy: Protecting Elections in an Electronic World." At the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. Larry, nice to have you on the program, all the best to you.
Norden: Thanks so much, Tavis.
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