Secure Our Voting System

Dear Friends,

Armed with truth and darn good ideas, Iowans for Voting Integrity are doing great work at the Statehouse this year.  Their concerns have found a receptive ear with the new Secretary or State, Mike Mauro.  The group strongly supports Mauro’s proposal for full funding of a statewide system of optically scanned paper ballots.

“Secretary Mauro's proposal is right on track. Voter-marked paper ballots offer the most reliable record of the voter's intent,” said Sean Flaherty, co-chair of Iowans for Voting Integrity. “The ballots are durable and can be recounted easily by hand.”

To comply with Iowa's new law requiring a paper trail for voting systems, counties that use touch screen voting machines must install printers or scrap the machines altogether.  In lieu of the machines, they can purchase a paper ballot system, in which voters mark individual paper ballots by hand or by using an assistive device for voters with disabilities. The paper ballots are then read by an optical scanner and can be recounted by hand.

The ATM-style printers for the touch screens have come under criticism from all sides in recent years. They store votes on a continuous roll, raising voter privacy concerns.  They are prone to printer jams, which can cause votes to be lost.  And studies have shown that the paper trail printout is not checked by a significant number of voters, and that the paper roll is easily damaged either maliciously or by accident.

Iowans for Voting Integrity also question the user-friendliness of touch screens. Last year, the group conducted a study of undervotes in statewide races on the November 2006 ballot.  (NOTE:  “Undervote” refers to the difference between the number of valid ballots cast in the election and the number of votes tallied for a particular office.  Undervotes are considered by many voting experts to be the single most reliable measure of a voting system's effectiveness and usability.)  The study found that, for all the contested statewide races, counties that used only voter-marked paper ballots with optical scan had the lowest undervote.  Counties using a mix of paper ballots and touch screens had the second-highest undervote, and counties using only touch screens at the polling place had the highest undervotes.

“When you see the undervote correlate with the equipment in all the contested races, you have a good idea what the best system is,” said Flaherty.  

Mauro's push for optical scan puts Iowa on the same path as other states, including Colorado, whose Governor just announced an agreement with the state legislature to advance a bill requiring that a statewide optical scan system be in place by November.  Also last week, Maryland's governor announced funding for a statewide conversion from touch screens to optical scan.  Florida plans to convert all polling places to optical scan by November.

Now would be an excellent time to weigh in with your state representative and senator.  Tell them to support Secretary of State Mauro’s initiative.  The security of our voting system depends on it.

Thanks!

Ed Fallon