Is
This Any Way To Vote?
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About
a fourth of Americans vote the same way they take standardized
tests or mark lottery tickets - by filling in circles or arrow
lines on cards that are read on the spot by optical scanners.
"You can have a multitude of people marking ballots at the
same time, so you get rid of the waiting lines," says Ed Packard,
election administrator in Alabama, where all but three of
the state's 67 counties use the method. "And you can program
the machines to kick overmarked ballots back to the voter
to redo." The scanners also claim an optimal accuracy rate
of 99%, but the scanning machines are costly.
Now, at
the cyberstage of the Industrial Revolution, the cutting edge
of voting is by computer. Around 9% of voters currently use
computer touch screens similar to those of atm machines. But
the touch-screen systems are still subject to programming
crashes, which could be disastrous in the event of a recount.
And the Internet? For now, the prospect of Web voting is promising,
but some of what it promises is trouble. It opens the way
to easy voting at computer stands anywhere - not just at polling
places but at every office, school and library. Results could
be tabulated instantly. But Internet voting also opens the
possibility of election results being stolen by hackers. And
if voting were permitted from home computers, it could lead
to the worst kind of "digital divide," in which only Americans
without computers - meaning the poor and the elderly - have
to go out to vote, while others do it from the comfort of
home.
But voting
on your home computer is a distant prospect, largely because
the security issues for that scenario are hardest to solve.
Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services Inc., a
Washington political consulting firm, says the promoters of
Internet voting still haven't settled the main concern, which
is "making sure a ballot is coming from the person authorized
to cast it and arriving at the county election office in the
same shape it started out in. There are a lot of 15-year-old
hackers."
In March,
Arizona's Democratic Party primary offered the nation's first
binding election to use the Internet. Though it was also possible
to cast ballots at polling places and through the mail, nearly
36,000 voters, 40% of the total turnout, chose to vote via
the Internet, many of them at home or at work. (Al Gore beat
Bill Bradley with 78% of the vote.) Turnout reached record
numbers, but there were frustrations with logging on and frozen
screens. Predominantly white districts preferred to vote by
computer, while minority voters more often stayed with traditional
methods.
Other high-tech
methods of voting have been suggested. Gene Brassil, who has
designed systems for Lucent and Bell Atlantic, spent the better
part of this year trying to convince election officials and
legislators that the future belongs to voice-verification
technology. His company, VoiceVoting.Com, based in Donner
Grove, Ill., promotes a system that could make possible voting
by phone. Voters would first establish a digitally encoded
"voice print" by speaking into a microphone when they register.
But the technology isn't yet proven, and the cost - between
$4 and $6 per vote initially - is way beyond even the most
expensive optical-scanner systems now in use.
While some
seek a technological solution, others are looking for ways
to alleviate the inconvenience of having to travel to a crowded
polling place in order to vote. Oregon this year tried all
mail-in ballots for the first time. Voters could send in their
ballots anytime up to the Friday before Election Day; after
that the ballots had to be brought personally to election
centers or designated drop-off sites. The mail-in system helped
boost Oregon's turnout to 63% of the state's eligible voters,
in contrast to a 51% turnout nationally. But a hefty 44% of
those ballots were deposited in person on Monday and Tuesday
alone. The result was crowding at election offices like the
one in Portland's Multnomah County, where the line of "mail-in"
voters on election night stretched for two blocks. "We have
vote-by-mail until the Friday before the election," says Dan
Lavey, a Bush campaign consultant and vote-by-mail skeptic.
"And from Saturday through Tuesday, we have mildly organized
chaos."
Democratic
Senator Charles Schumer of New York plans to introduce a bill
directing the Federal Election Commission to evaluate various
vote systems and propose guidelines for adopting the most
effective ones. Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania is
calling for a commission to do the same. A similar bill in
the House is sponsored by Republican Jim Leach of Iowa and
Oregon Democrat Peter DeFazio, who almost lost his seat in
1988 because of a poorly designed ballot. Because congressional
candidates appeared on the same line as presidential candidates,
79,000 people neglected to cast a vote for Congress.
Americans
can take some comfort from the knowledge that most other advanced
nations have voting methods at least as shopworn as ours.
All of Japan uses paper ballots on which voters write in candidates'
names themselves. On the other hand, sometimes the old methods
have their points. The ancient Greeks, who invented the tumult
of democracy, voted by tossing stones into a bowl: white for
yes, black for no - hence "blackballed." There is no recorded
problem of "hanging chads," though chipping might have been
an issue. Best of all, it was cost effective. Rocks can be
reused every year.
- Reported
by Melissa August and Anne Moffett/Washington, Elisabeth Kauffman/Nashville,
Todd Murphy/Portland, David Schwartz/Phoenix and Ken Shiffman/Concord
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November 27,
2000 | NO. 47
U
N I T E D S T A T E S
COVER:
One Nation, Under Chad
In the murkiness of Florida, amid bickering about bits of paper, will
the next President be decided in the margins of error?
THE
CANDIDATES: Tales from the War Rooms
The inside story of the battles to take the White House
VIEWPOINT:
Will Defeat Be Good for the Democrats?
Jeff Greenfield speculates on political expediency
THE
COURTS: Where Will It All End?
Adam Cohen on judges, briefs and supreme decisions
VOTING:
A Map for the Electoral Labyrinth
Richard Lacayo on the morass-and ways to get out of it
S
O U T H P A C I F I C
INDONESIA:
Trouble on the Border
The first pictures from a West Papuan separatist training camp
Viewpoint:
The rebels' presence in P.N.G. could hurt Australia
T
H E A R T S
BOOKS:
Frank Moorhouse
brings his lively League of Nations chronicle to a close
Barbara Kingsolver
returns to her roots
CINEMA:
Girlfight's Michelle Rodriguez, a knockout talent
MUSIC:
The rich afterlife of Everlast Soul Sister Mumba One
TRAVELER'S
ADVISORY
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