"Economic Choices-2008"-Paper Vs. Electronic
Monday, November 03, 2008SUSIE GHARIB: At one time they were undisputed front runners, a sure bet for Election Day victory. We're not talking about candidates. We're talking about those electronic voting machines many of you will use tomorrow. But it maybe the last time you will use them. Darren Gersh continues our economic choices coverage with a look at how hopes for big dollars in the voting booth ended up losing the race.
DARREN GERSH, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: Once considered faster, cheaper and more reliable than paper ballots, electronic voting machines are being replaced by, well, paper. Election expert Doug Chapin considers many of the industry's wounds self-inflicted.
DOUG CHAPIN, DIR, PEW CENTER ON THE STATES' ELECTIONLINE.ORG: The joke was almost that Diebold, which was one of the biggest vendors in the field, its voting machine arm made a small percentage of the profits and yet got the lion's share of the negative headlines.
GERSH: So what caused all of the negative headlines? Diebold alarmed Democrats in 2003 after its CEO sent out a letter inviting contributors to a fundraiser for George WZ. Bush. Kim Brace is an expert running elections. He says around the same time, researchers also started to question the security of the machines.
KIM BRACE, PRESIDENT, ELECTION DATA SERVICES: In 2003, a bunch of academics and activists did a big report that said that they were not reliable. They were subject to the potential of being hacked. But since that time, there has not been a single hacking of an election system in operation.
GERSH: But fears of electronic vote tampering had taken off, hitting the industry hard. After this election, Virginia plans to scrap machines like this. And Advanced Voting Solutions, the company that made them, has filed for bankruptcy. Election experts say an industry that once thought it would make huge profits improving the way America votes misjudged the market. To begin with, most counties only buy new machines once every 10 to 15 years. And the industry overestimated the resources of county governments and the demands from voters for a reliable paper audit trail. For example, Virginia is now requiring every new voting machine in the state to provide a paper audit trail. Rokey Suleman, general registrar of Fairfax County says the makers of high tech voting machines haven't been able to provide that feature in time.
ROKEY SULEMAN, GENERAL REGISTRAR, FAIRFAX COUNTY: The process to get a machine certified through the Federal government and then down through the state government is very long and burdensome. So there's not a lot of development time to get this equipment out. And then by the time it goes through the government channels, there's not enough market to sell the machines. So I think the companies gave up on electronic voting at the same time.
GERSH: Virginia isn't the only state going back to paper. After three decades of steady growth, 10 million fewer ballots will be cast using electronic voting equipment this election. And nationwide, six out of 10 counties will be using optical scan systems to count paper ballots tomorrow. Doug Chapin cautions counties are trading one imperfect system for another.
CHAPIN: Things can go wrong regardless of whether you're using a touch screen machine or a paper ballot or an optical scan ballot. There are just different things that can go wrong.
GERSH: If this were an election, it would be a landslide. An industry offering a high technology solution to one of democracy's oldest problems, counting votes, has been trounced by paper, a technology that is itself thousands of years old. Darren Gersh, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Fairfax, Virginia.
