Rep. Rush Holt to Push for Paper Ballots and Vote Count Audits for 2008

A new effort to ensure the 2008 presidential election is held using verifiable paper ballots and random audits to ensure accurate vote counts is underway in Congress.

Early next year, Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., will introduce the "Confidence in Voting Act of 2008," which would provide $500 million to counties and other election jurisdictions to replace controversial paperless electronic voting systems before the 2008 presidential election. The bill envisions voters using paper ballots that are marked by hand, or ballots that are printed on Election Day after voters use a computer to make their choices. An electronic scanner, like a standardized test, would then tally the ballots.

The bill also provides $100 million for audits, where 3 percent of all paper ballots -- including absentee and early voting -- would be hand-counted to verify the electronic count before winners would be certified. Those audits would be public, according to the New Jersey congressman.

The bill also would pay for printing "emergency" paper ballots to be used as backup if there were a "failure" of paperless voting systems, although it does not state what constitutes an emergency or a failure.

"The overall goal is to have audited elections based on voter-verified paper ballots throughout the country," Holt said. "Audits must be completed and discrepancies resolved before certification of the winner. You could publish the results on Election Night, but they would not be final."

The proposal by Holt comes against a backdrop of congressional gridlock on voting technology issues and studies by top election officials in key states, notably California and Ohio, which have documented security and accuracy problems with all-electronic voting systems. In some states, election administrators have wanted to update voting systems before 2008's presidential vote but have lacked the necessary funds.

"What we do is offer reimbursement for anyone who opts in," Holt said, stressing the proposal's optional nature. "There is time to do this by November."

Paper ballots, paper audits

Across the country, more than 69,000 precincts in 1,142 counties use paperless touch-screen electronic voting systems, according to Election Data Services. To replace these computers with an optical scan device would cost $5,000 to $6,000 each, according to industry estimates. There are additional costs for programming and training.

The bill, which Holt said has the support of the House Democratic leadership, does not specify which optical scan voting systems to use. That decision was best left to local election administrators, he said. However, the bill would not provide funding for the printing systems now accompanying electronic touch-screen machines known as the "Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail," or "VVPAT."

These cash register-like receipts were intended to record all individual votes for audits and recounts. However, many counties across the country have found these systems to be inaccurate, where VVPAT totals did not match results from other parts of the electronic voting system. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, where Cleveland is located, the VVPAT error rate in 2006's primary election was 10 percent, the Election Science Institute found. Holt's bill would not encourage continued use of this technology.

"The whole country is moving toward paper ballots with optical scanners," Holt said. "There are some places that want to hold on to their DREs (direct recording electronic or paperless voting machines). It wouldn't make sense for this legislation to encourage people to take steps that would be obsolete immediately."

"We could specify what transition would take place, but in the interests of passing something that the states would opt into, it has to be an independent decision," Holt said. "It has to be an audit that is independent as well."