Voters deserve confidence in ballot process

PACKET EDITORIAL, Nov. 14

By: Packet Editorial
   In the wake of last week’s midterm election, a lot of Democrats are looking forward to the next couple of years for a lot of reasons.
   In the foreign-policy arena, they see an opportunity to move President Bush off his "stay-the-course" direction in Iraq, draw a distinction between the U.S. military adventure in that country and the broader war on terror, and repair relations with longstanding U.S. allies, primarily in Europe, that have been ruptured by the president’s go-it-alone strategy.
   On domestic policy, they see a chance to stanch the bleeding red ink caused by the combination of huge tax cuts and extraordinary military expenditures, steer congressional attention away from restrictive legislation on immigration, stem-cell research and abortion and direct it instead toward safety-net issues ranging from Social Security and Medicare to unemployment insurance and the minimum wage.
   But while the political leaders and operatives of both parties, along with all the pundits who watch their activities so intently, focus on how these big-picture issues and strategies will unfold between now and 2008, we wouldn’t be surprised if Rep. Rush Holt has a more specific, immediate goal: Getting his paper-trail legislation off the back burner and up near the top of Congress’s agenda, where it belongs.
   For years, the 12th District Democrat, laboring in the minority, has introduced his Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act, a measure that would require electronic voting machines to produce a backup paper record of every vote recorded. And it has gone nowhere — not because it hasn’t been widely acknowledged (by virtually everyone except the companies that manufacture the machines) that such a step is necessary, but because Rep. Holt has a D next to his name. And, since 1994, when the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, legislation introduced by members with a D next to their name has rarely seen the light of day.
   Now, Rep. Holt, who has served in the House since 1999 and started pushing his paper-trail legislation shortly after the disputed presidential election of 2000, may finally be in a position to take a backbencher’s well-intentioned but doomed initiative and turn it into the law of the land. With Democrats taking control of both houses of Congress, and with the problems associated with electronic voting growing more evident with each passing election, the time has clearly arrived for sweeping reform of the way votes are recorded and counted all across the United States.
   It is astonishing to us that in a country where the technology exists to provide a paper trail of every bank deposit and withdrawal, every phone call, every credit card transaction we make — by the hundreds of millions every day — we do not require the same measure of protection when it comes to our most cherished democratic right, which we exercise only a couple of times each year. It is even more astonishing in light of the overwhelming evidence that electronic voting is far from foolproof — demonstrated not only by Princeton University professor Edward Felten’s successful attempt in September to hack into an allegedly tamper-resistant voting machine in less than 60 seconds, but also by the spate of reported problems experienced by both voters and election officials just two months later.
   With the petty political excuse — Rep. Holt’s party affiliation — now out of the way, there is simply no reason to keep this important reform bottled up in committee. We encourage Rep. Holt to redouble his effort to get the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act to the floor of Congress early in the coming session. And we urge his colleagues in both houses to pass it promptly — and President Bush to sign it into law.