06 November 2007
Expert Discusses Electronic Voting Systems in America
USINFO Webchat transcript, November 6
Election expert Paul DeGregorio answered questions in a November 6 USINFO Webchat on the U.S. presidential election. This is the third in a series of webchats on the 2008 U.S. elections.
Following is the transcript:
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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Bureau of International Information Programs
USINFO Webchat Transcript
Elections 2008 -- New Voting Technology: Problem or Solution?
Guest: Paul DeGregorio
Date: November 6, 2007
Time: 10:00 a.m. EST (1500 GMT)
Moderator: Welcome to our webchat! We look forward to your questions now or during the live chat which will begin today at 15:00 GMT.
We would like to welcome everyone to the third Web chat in our 2008 elections series. Paul DeGregorio will be on in just a few minutes to answer your questions about the promises and pitfalls of electronic voting systems and the actions the U.S. government has taken to facilitate the casting of ballots across the country. We are excited to take your questions!
Question [Chat Participant]: Why improve the paper ballot? No hacker can change the paper ballot.
Answer [Paul DeGregorio]: Paper ballots have been used successfully for centuries in elections held throughout the world, however, they also have been subject to fraud and manipulation. Paper ballots have been changed in the counting process, lost in rivers and found uncounted in boxes in election offices long after an election. The key to any process is security -- at all levels.
Q [Chat Participant]: Outside USA where is most advanced New Voting Technology?
A: One could argue that the Internet voting technology that is being used in places like Estonia, Netherlands, the U.K. Switzerland and Australia is more advanced that what is seen in the USA.
Q [Chat Participant]: What is status of US New Voting technology?
A: Voting technologies, particularly electronic voting technologies, are under close scrutiny in the USA by election authorities, interest groups and the public. The US Election Assistance Commission (EAC) continues to certify new laboratories that test the equipment and state election officials have imposed new guidelines and tests on such equipment. The EAC recently put forth some new management guidelines that will help local and state election officials manage new voting technologies.
Q [Kuba]: Sir, as you say, security is paramount. My question: Even if security’s considered 100%, won't the voter, the public STILL have a fear, a suspect of the true voting outcome? My example: Do not most people in the world have a fear of purchasing goods online? Why they will have the trust of a vote they cannot see go to the box? How do you respond?
A: That is a good question. I have found in my international work that trust in election officials varies a great deal. For example, I recently accessed the 21 October Swiss election for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Estonia election in March and found voters there have a very high trust of election officials and the outcome of the election, even though both countries have very complex voting systems. On the other hand, in countries where there have been problems, close elections and many question asked about the process, the public is less trusting. There are people who will always have a difficult time trusting technology, and there are those who have a difficult time trusting that paper ballots will be properly counted. It's important to have rules and guidelines in place that enhance public trust.
Moderator: Paul DeGregorio is a contributing author to the latest eJournalUSA: Elections 2008. Read his article here.
Q [Tamara2]: Can the secrecy of electronic or internet voting be as guaranteed as voting by the paper ballot?
A: Yes it can. Electronic and Internet voting systems can duplicate and even go further than paper ballot systems in ensuring that the secrecy of the vote is protected. Votes and data can be highly-encrypted to make sure no one can read someone's vote. Also, electronic procedures to separate a vote from a voter (just like you do when you put your paper ballot into a box) can be put in place. Of course these systems need to be tested and it's always best that their software and source code is open to intense scrutiny to make sure it does what is supposed to do. There is more testing done of such software today then there ever has been -- and rightly so.
Moderator: The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs invites you to its new Guide to the 2008 Elections website at http://usinfo.state.gov/politics/elections/.
Thank you for your questions. Please continue to submit them. Mr. DeGregorio is answering them as quickly as possible as they come in.
Q [Chat Participant]: Thank you. If I may with a second question. Can you predict what % of US elections in 2008 will go to the e method? And what the Republican and Democrat parties have said about this? Do they support?
A: I am assuming you mean what % of Americans will use some type of electronic voting device in 2008. First let me state that over 90% of ballots will be counted electronically (which includes paper-based optical scan ballots). Over 40% of USA votes will use some type of electronic device (such as a touch screen) to cast their votes. Some states are considering pilot projects to allow military and overseas voters to cast their ballots over the Internet, especially after a recent EAC report showed that only 30% of the ballots that were sent to such voters in the 2006 election were received and counted. The political parties vary in their support of electronic systems. There have been critics and supporters of e-voting from both parties.
Q [rosalea]: The typical US ballot is far more complex than ones in countries that have a parliamentary democracy, where typically you are voting to elect just one representative and there are no bond issues or constitution changes or referenda on the ballot. Also, those countries usually have a government department that is charged with running elections and has a budget for it. How does the US system, where counties and states are the level at which voting is paid for, cope with all the complexities within tight budgets and timelines?
A: U.S. election officials have traditionally had a difficult time securing enough fund and support to run their offices. When I was Director of Elections in St. Louis County, Missouri, USA in the late 80s and early 90s, I had to make a lot of noise to get more funds. It's quite different today due to the 2000 USA presidential election. Government officials pay more attention and Congress did allocate $3 billion dollars in federal dollars for election reform for the states, a first in the nations' history. However, compared to some countries I have seen, the USA still lags behind in its funding of election administration. By the way, Switzerland has a very complex parliamentary ballot. In the Bern canton (state), where I observed the process, voters could write in up to 26 names (some of them twice) on a ballot paper that had to be checked by hand twice and then each of the 26 votes (per person that is) entered into a computer software program as a data entry by hand. It took 2 days to count relatively few ballots.
Moderator: Today is the third webchat in our 2008 elections series. Our next webchat in this series is Elections 2008: Women Voters in the United States with Kellyanne Conway. The chat takes place on November 9. Learn more at http://usinfo.state.gov/usinfo/USINFO/Products/Webchats/conway_09_nov_2007.html.
This series of webchats is based on the current USINFO eJournal: The Long Campaign: U.S. Elections 2008. You may access this eJournal through the USINFO website at http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itdhr/1007/ijde/ijde1007.htm.
Q [Jeno Szep]: What do you think what changes or developments are required to enable US citizens staying abroad to cast their ballot via distance e-voting on the internet?
A: There are an estimated 6,000,000 Americans who live and work abroad and who are eligible to vote in USA elections. Unfortunately, the basic process of voting for these individuals has not changed since my father served on Iwo Jima in 1944 in the Second World War and cast his absentee ballot by mail.
The process still relies heavily on the postal system -- of all countries. In the 2006 election, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, about 960,000 Americans were sent ballots by their local election authorities yet only about 330,000 were returned in time to be counted. That is a very troubling and sad figure for the USA, who should be ensuring that every voter -- no matter if they are stationed in Iraq as a soldier or working in Congo on a relief project -- has the opportunity to cast a ballot.
The USA has tried some Internet voting pilots but not clearly enough. Drs. R. Michael Alvarez and Thad E. Hall of Cal/Tech and the University of Utah made a strong case in their 2004 book "Point, Click, and Vote: the Future of Internet Voting" for more Internet pilots in the USA.
Some states are now giving serious consideration to such pilots for the 2008 presidential election and perhaps others, and are focusing on the needs of military and overseas voters. The EAC is charged with coming up with guidelines for such voting and I am confident they will do so. They and the states are looking to successful Internet voting pilots in other countries. Just this past Sunday, Australian military voters based in Iraq and Afghanistan began voting over the Internet for their 24 November parliamentary election. This example will encourage others to use the Internet to serve their military and overseas voters -- and to use it in all elections.
I also think that the younger generation will demand Internet voting in the not-too-distant future. Just yesterday a report came out that 80% of Americans use the Internet on a regular basis -- an all-time high. Its statistics and usage like that which will encourage more use of the Internet in voting in the USA.
Moderator: "Meet" the 2008 Presidential candidates at: http://usinfo.state.gov/politics/elections/candidates.html.
Q [rosalea]: Thank you for your answer to my earlier question, especially with the example you gave of the Swiss ballot counting. You say it took 2 days to count relatively few ballots, but I notice that each ballot was counted by hand twice and even though there was data entry, the ballot each person wrote upon would be the record used for a recount. Is it possible to count optical scan ballots in the same way and then use the computer reading of them for a recount only? I know there is a lot of concern that any sort of computer-tallied results occur out of sight inside a black box, and perhaps people would prefer to wait for a result they feel they can trust.
A: Counting paper ballots by hand is not as precise as you think it is. In my Swiss example, I noticed (by personal observation) people making mistakes in the count. Yes, most of these mistakes were probably caught in the second count, but perhaps not all. I have seen worn-out election workers, some who count paper ballots right after the polls close and some who count them the next day after a good nights sleep get frustrated by mistakes and inconsistent counts and decide to split the difference when their teams cannot reach agreement on the same stack of ballots. In the USA as you know, we are use to getting election results immediately. Any delays raise suspicions that votes are being changed and manipulated. Counting ballots by hand, especially in a presidential election, would take weeks if not months. And mistakes no doubt will be made in the count and magnified by the media. People will wonder why we didn't fix the system. Don't get me wrong, I am of the school that it's much more important to be accurate and complete, then issue incomplete or vote totals that may be in question. Unfortunately, election officials are pressured by the media to issue "unofficial" results, which can change the winner when absentee and additional votes are added to the totals days after the election (as is the case in California).
I do like what I saw in Switzerland and Belgium, where polling place and counting officials are conscripted by their local governments to work (like jury duty). This allows for a greater diversity of the public to be involved in the actual process of serving voters and counting ballots. With the fact that we need 1.5 million Americans to work at the polls on presidential election day, we could use more of that type of help in the USA.
I want to thank the U.S. State Department for giving me the opportunity to participate in this webchat and thank everyone around the globe for their great questions. Should you have more, please free to contact me at paul@everyonecounts.com.
Moderator: We wish to thank Paul DeGregorio for joining us today. The Web chat is now closed. Please visit our USINFO's Webchat Station homepage for more information on upcoming events and a transcript of today’s discussion (usually posted within one business day).
(Guests are chosen for their expertise. The views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of State.)
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(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
