http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/12/opinion/12sun2.html?th=&pagewanted=print&position=
The New York Times
September 12, 2004
On the Voting Machine Makers' Tab
As doubts have grown about the reliability of electronic voting, some of
its loudest defenders have been state and local election officials. Many of
those same officials have financial ties to voting machine companies. While
they may sincerely think that electronic voting machines are so trustworthy
that there is no need for a paper record of votes, their views have to be
regarded with suspicion until their conflicts are addressed.
Computer scientists, who understand the technology better than anyone else,
have been outspoken about the perils of electronic voting. Good government
groups, like Common Cause, are increasingly mobilizing grass-roots
opposition. And state governments in a growing number of states, including
California and Ohio, have pushed through much-needed laws that require
electronic voting machines to produce paper records.
But these groups have faced intense opposition from election officials. At
a hearing this spring, officials from Georgia, California and Texas
dismissed concerns about electronic voting, and argued that
voter-verifiable paper trails, which voters can check to ensure their vote
was correctly recorded, are impractical. The Election Center, which does
election training and policy work, and whose board is dominated by state
and local election officials, says the real problem is people who "scare
voters and public officials with claims that the voting equipment and/or
its software can be manipulated to change the outcome of elections."
What election officials do not mention, however, are the close ties they
have to the voting machine industry. A disturbing number end up working for
voting machine companies. When Bill Jones left office as California's
secretary of state in 2003, he quickly became a consultant to Sequoia
Voting Systems. His assistant secretary of state took a full-time job
there. Former secretaries of state from Florida and Georgia have signed on
as lobbyists for Election Systems and Software and Diebold Election
Systems. The list goes on.
Even while in office, many election officials are happy to accept voting
machine companies' largess. The Election Center takes money from Diebold
and other machine companies, though it will not say how much. At the
center's national conference last month, the companies underwrote meals and
a dinner cruise.
Forty-three percent of the budget of the National Association of
Secretaries of State comes from voting machine companies and other vendors,
and at its conference this summer in New Orleans, Accenture, which compiles
voter registration databases for states, sponsored a dinner at the Old
State Capitol in Baton Rouge.
There are also reports of election officials being directly offered gifts.
Last year, the Columbus Dispatch reported that a voting machine company was
offering concert tickets and limousine rides while competing for a contract
worth as much as $100 million, if not more.
When electronic voting was first rolled out, election officials and voting
machine companies generally acted with little or no public participation.
But now the public is quite rightly insisting on greater transparency and
more say in the decisions. If election officials want credibility in this
national discussion, they must do more to demonstrate that their only
loyalty is to the voter.
Making Votes Count: Editorials in this series remain online at
nytimes.com/makingvotescount.
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R. A. Hettinga