As the nation turns its attention to the hotly contested 2006 Pennsylvania Senate race, Stephanie Singer will not rely on others to find out about any electoral foul play.
The former Haverford College mathematics professor is currently developing a system that will review data from the state's upcoming elections to search for patterns that could prove to be evidence of vote tampering.
Singer says motivation for the project came from what she saw as "staggering statistical evidence" of fraud in the 2004 presidential elections.
And Singer is not the only one wary of current voting systems. Steven Freeman, a visiting scholar at Penn's Center for Organizational Dynamics, says he was amazed by the lack of accountability of electronic voting systems after researching discrepancies between exit polling and vote tallies in the 2004 presidential election.
"It's almost unbelievable. There's absolutely no confirmation that votes are counted as cast," said Freeman. "That's not the way to do it."
With the introduction of electronic voting machines under the Help America Vote Act, which President Bush signed into law in 2002, Singer believes the risk of voter fraud has multiplied exponentially.
"Paper fraud has to be retail, which means someone has to be there at the voting booth, but electronic voter fraud can be wholesale," said Singer.
As a way to protect against such manipulation, lawmakers have proposed a voter verified paper audit, which would allow voters to see a record of their vote and election officials to keep physical evidence of the results.
So far, the budget for Singer's project is only $12,000, and she is still working on how to collect data. Because each county board of elections makes its own decisions about which of the state's certified voting systems to use and how voter records and votes are compiled, this is no easy task.
Once the information is collected, Singer plans to use technology to sort and highlight patterns which would be otherwise "invisible to the human eye." If these patterns show irregular behavior, she hopes that by publicizing her findings she will inspire further investigation.
Pennsylvania State Department spokesman Brian McDonald says he is confident that the electronic voting systems available for the 2006 Pennsylvania elections, none of which create a paper trail, have sufficient protection against fraud.
The different voting systems are created by private companies and tested by computer consultants hired by the State Department and under the supervision of election officials and in-house attorneys to receive certification.
All of the certified systems are electronic, and none use paper audits, which McDonald said are dangerous because they make it possible for voters to sell their ballots.
