VVCVa Press Releases

Virginia voting groups warn that new registrations, limited resources combine to leave some localities no room for error

A huge increase in voter registrations statewide, combined with a decision on the part of many localities to continue using only touchscreen voting machines, means voters in some areas should expect long lines this Election Day.

The number of registered voters in Virginia climbed by more than 300,000 this year, according to the State Board of Elections (SBE). This, coupled with the expected record turnout rate for this year’s Presidential election, would have posed challenges for many jurisdictions under any circumstances.

However, the problem is likely to be greater in localities that still use direct record electronic voting machines (DREs) as their only method of voting on Election Day. Some localities have barely the statutory minimum number of DREs, currently one machine per 750 registered voters, and a few may not have even that many, once the last registrations have been processed. And some voter groups say that the legal minimum is not nearly great enough to serve all the voters expected to turn out for this election.

“We would prefer to see one DRE per no more than 500 voters,” said Ivy Main, Policy Director of the election reform group New Era for Virginia. “And even below 500 you might see problems if there are local races or bond issues that keep each voter standing at the machines for two minutes or more.”

Joseph Waymack of the Southern Coalition for Secured Voting also expressed concern over Virginia’s standard, noting that North Carolina uses one DRE for every 250 voters.

Dr. Alex Blakemore of Virginia Verified Voting analyzed the numbers of registered voters and the number of available DREs across the state, as reported to the SBE, to determine which localities were at greatest risk.  His research showed that a number of jurisdictions are close to the minimum requirement, and many more fall into the 500-750 range. (See chart. Note that numbers are based on registrations posted as of September 30.)

Many of the jurisdictions at greatest risk have relatively small populations, but some are of special concern because they have multiple races on the ballot. Suffolk, for example, has mayoral, city council and school board races on the ballot in addition to the presidential and congressional races. With 670 voters per DRE, voters may face significant wait times. And Staunton would need just 12 more voters in one of its precincts to exceed the statutory minimum.

The largest jurisdiction of concern is Prince William County, with 392 DREs for 206,956 registered voters–an average of 528 voters per machine.

“That ratio suggests we might see long lines at some Prince William precincts, though the short ballot this year will make up somewhat for the higher turnout,” said Dr. Blakemore. “But the question you then have to ask is, what happens if the machines break down?”

Some DREs break down in almost every statewide election, he pointed out, so the local electoral board’s backup plan is crucial to the election proceeding smoothly. With no surplus of machines to replace ones that are not quickly repaired and put back into operation, the ability to provide voters with paper ballots will be critical. However, the county has announced plans to provide only 300 paper ballots to each precinct, regardless of the number of voters registered for that location. “With some precincts having more than 4,000 registered voters, 300 ballots would not last long,” Dr. Blakemore pointed out. “And then what?”

His group, as well as New Era for Virginia and other voter groups in the Verifiable Voting Coalition of Virginia (VVCV), believes the SBE should direct all the jurisdictions that use DREs to prepare a number of paper ballots equal to at least 25% of the number of registered voters, and to begin using them immediately if a machine breaks down.

Because the official ballots can’t be just photocopied as needed on Election Day without a cumbersome authorization process, the groups say, it would be better to start out with too many ballots, and have to recycle the leftovers, than to start with too few, and risk losing the votes of those who can’t wait.

It would have been even better, Dr. Blakemore added, if jurisdictions like Prince William County had followed the lead of counties like Fairfax and Arlington, which used DREs in past years but purchased optical scanning machines this year. With this system, voters mark paper ballots and feed them into a scanner, a system that can accommodate many more voters. The two counties will offer both voting methods this November in every precinct, and plan to have enough paper ballots for every registered voter.

Voters who prefer the touchscreen machines will be able to vote on them, but Dr. Blakemore encourages voters to choose paper ballots, which provide a paper trail and will be preserved for use in the case of a recount. And because the scanning process is so fast, wait times are minimal. “Fairfax County even plans to have clipboards available so that voters who don’t want to wait for a privacy booth can vote using paper ballots as soon as they have been checked in,” said Blakemore.

In addition to Fairfax and Arlington Counties, the cities of Williamsburg and Charlottesville purchased optical scanning machines this year. Suffolk purchased one such machine to serve its largest precinct, freeing up some DREs to use in other precincts.

______________________

The Verifiable Voting Coalition of Virginia formed in 2006 to advocate for legislation making the voting process more secure and reliable, and to provide voters with a voter-verifiable paper audit trail. Successful initiatives have included the ban on new DRE purchases, improved certification requirements for election machines, a ban on highly-insecure wireless communication in new voting machines, and improved procedures for election recounts. The VVCV includes Virginia Verified Voting, the League of Women Voters of Virginia, New Era for Virginia, Common Cause, the Southern Coalition for Secured Voting, and the Virginia Organizing Project, among others.

For more information, contact:
Dr. Alex Blakemore, Virginia Verified Voting, at 703-627-6569, alexblakemore@comcast.net.
Ivy Main, New Era for VA, at 703-967-2876, ivymain@cox.net.
Joseph Waymack, Southern Coalition for Secured Voting, at 804-926-0215, josephwaymack@yahoo.com

Last November, voters in Ashland, Virginia went to the polls to choose their county supervisor. Unfortunately, due to the limitations in Virginia’s election laws, we will never know with certainty which candidate the voters actually selected.

The voting machines rejected nineteen paper ballots. The margin between the candidates was only fifteen votes. Nonetheless, the court overseeing the recount declared that officials could not even examine the rejected nineteen ballots. Rather than verifying the accuracy of the election, the recount simply restated the original results.

Now Senator Mark Herring (D-Loudoun) has introduced legislation into the General Assembly that would prevent a replay of the Ashland case. SB 292 would safeguard the integrity of Virginia’s voting systems by requiring meaningful, well-controlled recounts.

The bill directs election officials to compare the electronic counts of a sample set of machines with the results of hand counts of paper ballots. This ensures that the machines were properly programmed and calibrated, rather than simply assuming no errors occurred.
Secondly, the bill provides a clear rule specifying that uncounted ballots must be examined in those cases where the machine-rejected ballots could change the election outcome (as in the Ashland election). In the absence of such a rule from the General Assembly, courts have been reluctant to use their discretion to allow those ballots to be examined.

Finally, the bill would also give election officials a means to investigate tabulating machines they have reason to believe may have malfunctioned on election day, an option not available under current law.
“It is critically important in a democracy that voters have confidence in the outcome of an election,” said Senator Herring. “They need to know their votes have been counted correctly. In a tight race, even a small computer error could lead to a false outcome — and you won’t know it if no one’s checking. That’s not fair to the candidates, and it’s not fair to the voters.”

The legislation would only apply to voting systems that use paper ballots fed into optical scan tabulators. The electronic touchscreen machines known as DREs that are still in use in many parts of Virginia do not produce a paper record, making recounts and audits impossible. Last year the legislature banned future purchases of the touchscreen machines in response to serious security and reliability concerns. Jurisdictions that use them are expected to transition to paper ballots and optical scanners over the next several years.

Senator Herring worked with computer experts, lawyers, and voter advocates from the Verifiable Voting Coalition of Virginia (VVCV) to develop the recount and audit procedures. The group was instrumental in lobbying for last year’s DRE ban, and the passage of SB 292 is their top priority this year.

“Optical scanning is the most reliable and secure technology being used in the U.S. today,” said Alex Blakemore, a computer scientist who is one of the coalition’s leaders. “Besides its simplicity and low-cost, it lets you compare the machine results against the paper ballots filled out by the voters. But a paper trail guarantees the accuracy of the count only if someone’s checking the paper. Right now, there’s no provision in Virginia law to look at the paper ballots, even in those jurisdictions that use them.

Sharon Henderson, a lawyer who works with the coalition, agreed. “It’s almost impossible to detect any errors that occurred during the administration of an election as the result of a recount conducted under current law. For the most part what is called a recount consists of having a computer spit out the same results it gave you the first time.”

Dr. Blakemore cited a number of incidents where election machines have malfunctioned in recent years to produce suspect results, including documented cases in North Carolina, Indiana, Ohio and other states.

He said one telling case occurred in Wayne County, North Carolina in a 2002 state election. As in the Ashland case, it was a close election using optical scan tabulators. But unlike the Virginia recount, North Carolina officials checked the paper ballots and found that a programming error in the tabulator had altered the outcome of the election. That case had a happy ending: the error was caught and fixed, and the candidate the voters had chosen was sent to the state capital.

If a similar mistake were to occur in Virginia — and perhaps it has, notes Blakemore — there would be no way to detect it despite the appearance of a recount. In that case, voters might continue to use the machine in future elections, not knowing a problem existed. Senator Herring’s bill, SB 292, is designed to make sure this doesn’t happen.

The Verifiable Voting Coalition of Virginia includes Virginia Verified Voting, the New Electoral Reform Alliance for Virginia (New Era), the Virginia Libertarian Party, the League of Women Voters of Virginia, Common Cause, the Southern Coalition for Secured Voting, and the Virginia Organizing Project.

For additional information, please contact: Alex Blakemore, Virginia Verified Voting, 703.627.6569, alexblakemore@comcast.net, or Ivy Main, New Era for VA, 703.967.2876, ivy.main@neweraforva.org.

The Verifiable Voting Coalition of Virginia (VVCV) will seek new legislation this year to provide meaningful recounts in close elections and to ensure that new paper-based election systems are audited for accuracy.

In hallmark legislation last year, the General Assembly banned further purchases of touchscreen voting machines, known as direct record electronic, or DRE, machines. The machines have been shown to be vulnerable to manipulation and error, and do not permit voters to verify that their choices have been correctly recorded. The decision to phase out DREs puts Virginia in line with a number of other states that have recently decided to abandon DREs in the face of security concerns.

Local Virginia jurisdictions that use DREs are expected to replace them over the next few years with optical scanners that read paper ballots. The scanners tally the votes, and the paper ballots are retained as a “paper trail.” But there are currently no requirements for anyone to examine the paper trail, and that, say VVCV members, is a critical next step.

“Optical scanning is a more secure, less expensive, and voter-verifiable technology,” says Jeremy Epstein, a nationally-recognized expert in election machine security and a co-founder of Virginia Verified Voting, one of the coalition members. “But the point of having a paper trail is to look at the paper. Any machine can make errors, and some can potentially be tampered with. So until you actually have a system in place to audit a small, randomly-selected set of machines by comparing the machine tallies with the paper ballots, voters still can’t have confidence in the integrity of the vote count.”

The paper ballots should also be examined in the case of a recount. Carol Doran Klein, a lawyer with the New Electoral Reform Alliance for Virginia (New Era), another coalition member, points out that current law does not permit election officials to examine the paper ballots even when they exist. “Right now in Virginia, a recount basically consists of going back to the machine and asking it to give you the same number it gave you the first time,” she says. “It’s not a real recount, and that’s unfair to both the candidates and the voters.”

Virginia has seen a number of very close races in recent years, adds Sharon Henderson, another New Era lawyer, but it’s rare for the outcome to change as the result of a recount conducted under current law. Citing this year’s Senate race between Ken Cuccinelli and Janet Oleszek, Henderson says Oleszek is fighting an uphill battle. “The law simply doesn’t let officials look at the actual ballots that were cast, even to the extent they’ve got them.”

Olga Hernandez, President of the League of Women Voters of Virginia, says her group joined the VVCV last year because they were worried about not having an actual ballot to recount. Last year the state took the first step by disallowing future DRE purchases. “We need legislation that provides for meaningful recounts and regular, random audits. We need to have verifiable election machines, so we need to take the obvious next step, and put the ‘verify’ in ‘verifiable’.”

For additional information, please contact: Jeremy Epstein, Virginia Verified Voting, 703.989.8907, Jeremy.Epstein@vvcva.org; Ivy Main, New Era for VA, 703.967.2876, ivymain@cox.net; Carol Doran Klein, New Era for VA, 703.883.9514, doranklein@cox.net.

A coalition of citizens’ groups will be working to pass legislation through the Virginia 2007 legislative session to require all election machines in the state to provide voter-verifiable paper audit trails.

Currently, most Virginians vote on paperless machines, known as direct record electronic (DRE) machines that resemble computer laptops. Critics, including computer experts, note that software errors or deliberate manipulation of the software programs can result in errors that may not be detectable before, or even during and after, an election, and that such errors could affect the results of elections. With voters unable to verify that their votes have been properly cast, and with no paper record of each vote, there is no way to audit the machines or to conduct a recount in the event of a close or contested election.

“Every independent study of paperless electronic voting systems has shown that they are insecure, vulnerable to attack from insiders and outsiders, and preclude meaningful recounts or audits”, said Jeremy Epstein, co-founder of Virginia Verified Voting and a member of two Virginia legislative commissions that studied the machines. “The vast majority of computer scientists, including virtually all computer security experts believe that the addition of paper (preferably in the form of optical scan ballots) is necessary for accurate recountable elections.” Epstein added “the current situation in Florida’s 13th Congressional District shows what can happen when there is no paper backup - we will never know if 18,000 voters intentionally skipped selecting a Congressional candidate or if a machine malfunction dropped their votes”.

While it is possible to add paper printers to DREs to achieve the goal of verifiability, the Coalition believes the better approach is the use of paper ballots read by optical scanners. Not only is this a less expensive approach, but it is already in use by several Virginia jurisdictions for counting absentee ballots, and the system is familiar both to election officials and to voters who vote by absentee ballot.

Last year the New Era for VA and Virginia Verified Voting supported legislation introduced by Delegate Tim Hugo and Senator Jeannemarie Devolites Davis to mandate voter-verifiable paper audit trails and require regular random audits. Delegate Hugo and Senator Devolites Davis have announced plans to introduce similar legislation this year. The Verifiable Voting Coalition of Virginia invites all Virginians who care about the security and integrity of our democratic process to join with us to support these necessary reforms.