The election that is just around the corner will undoubtably bring back for some the painful memories of the 2000 Florida fiasco. Avoiding disenfranchising voters is always important, but after that debacle it has never been more so. This is not a partisan issue -- all voters should be able to vote for their candidate with security, safe in the knowledge that their voice will not be lost or misrepresented.
Unfortunately, as it stands today that assurance does not exist. Many have voiced concerns over electronic voting machines, and with a projected 28.9 percent of registered voters slated to use the machines in this upcoming election, change is needed to ensure voter accuracy to the highest degree possible. Philadelphia County does not use the Diebold machines, which have a history of malfunction and vulnerability to tampering. However, the direct recording electronic machines that Philadelphia does use suffer from one similar fatal flaw: the inability to audit the voting results in the event that a serious problem occurs.
One potential way to improve on the current system is to have the voting machines simply print out a receipt for all voters that shows which candidate received their vote. This would help avoid a situation where voters walk out, thinking they've voted for one candidate, when the machine actually counted their vote for another one.
Poll workers would then collect the receipts from voters on the way out. At the end of the day, this would leave a physical collection of votes that could be used to verify results if they were ever called into question. In effect, it would be a literal paper trail, and a weapon against potential fraud or malfunction. On the flip side, it would also keep voters from walking out of the polls with physical evidence of who they voted for: something that could be used for bribery or intimidation. A bill that recommends this type of modification is currently before Congress in the form of HR.2239/S.2437.
This change would not be logistically challenging. As it stands, the machine prints out copies of the results after the polls close. In effect, this change would simply mean printing out more. The cost and effort is well worth it, as the fact that Philadelphia has yet to suffer a contested election involving electronic voting machines would be little consolation in the event that such a contested election occurred.
