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Sep. 17, 2007

Law Aimed at Voter Fraud Has Unintended Impact for N.C.

By Chris Heagarty

RALEIGH - Legislation was recently introduced in Congress to raise standards for electronic voting machines with the goal of improving voter protection. But unintended consequences could make the situation worse, not better.

Here’s the problem. After North Carolina experienced difficulties with electronic voting machines in one county, losing enough ballots that some very close statewide races were left undecided well past Election Day, state legislation was adopted in 2005 that required counties to use only voting machines with a verifiable paper trail. This meant either the fill-in-the-dot electronically read ballots or electronic touch-screen machines that record every transaction by printing it on what looks like a sealed roll of paper.

In North Carolina, the state decertified all existing voting machines, and created state requirements for new machines. All counties had to buy new equipment. Voting machine companies had the opportunity to sell many machines.

However, because they saw the state’s restrictions as too burdensome, few companies even made the attempt to get licensed.  Ultimately, North Carolina’s counties were permitted to choose from a list of approved vendors that had only one company on it, the only company that would accept all of the state’s requirements.

Now, this newly proposed federal legislation would require additional changes for all the counties that bought brand new touch-screen equipment -- changes that our only state vendor of voting equipment says it can’t meet.

The legislation sounds reasonable, improving how the actual paper records are created. It won’t affect all of our counties, just the ones using the touch-screen equipment instead of the fill-in-the-dot ballots. Other provisions of the legislation are very helpful, such as requiring more audits of election results.

Unfortunately, the manufacture and sale of voting machines is a seller’s market, not a buyer’s market. Few companies are publicly held, and many are foreign owned.

Even if county governments, already strapped for cash due to high costs of health care and educational services, are willing to throw out new machines in favor of newer ones, what will happen when 2012 rolls around and not one company meets the state requirements?

Will existing companies be forced by competition to comply with mandated changes? No. Manufacturers already think it’s too expensive to comply with our state and federal restrictions and will choose not to sell in our state, rather than incur expenses they don’t want. Vendors bypass our state and sell to states with looser restrictions or sell overseas.

Does that sound extreme? Consider this: Every voting machine company except one has already voluntarily taken itself out of the North Carolina market. Some don’t want to comply with the state’s requirement that they turn over proprietary computer code. Others say it is too expensive to comply with the specific verifiable voting specifications we require. Only one vendor is left and it claims it can’t meet the new requirements in the federal legislation.

Will new companies emerge to fill the gap and deliver what’s needed and reap the profits? No, only vendors large enough to post a large bond can be certified in our state. The verified voting law requires all vendors to be bonded so that if there is a problem with their equipment they -- not the state -- will pay the costs of a new election. Securing such an expensive bond eliminates the entrepreneur and the start-up competitor from even bidding.

Some problems will always be with us. Voter fraud didn’t originate with the invention of the computer. There are hundreds of ways to rig an election that don’t have anything to do with electronic voting machines. That doesn’t mean you stop trying to fix the problem, but you have to make sure your solution actually works.

Rather than trying to build the perfect incorruptible voting machine, lawmakers should steeply increase penalties for corruption and voter fraud, and put teeth into the laws we do have so that federal and state prosecutors have the tools they need to deter election fraud, and to punish it when it does happen.

Chris Heagarty is the former executive director of the N.C. Center for Voter Education, a Raleigh-based nonprofit and nonpartisan organization dedicated to improving elections in North Carolina.