E-voting is nice but not perfect

PETER BUFFA

Did you vote? I did.

Tuesday morning, in the booth, in the flesh, figuratively

speaking. Voting by absentee ballot is the hot number these days, but

I like going to my little polling place and going behind the little

curtain to cast my vote.

It all seems so Norman Rockwell, in a world with darn little

Norman or Rockwell left. Those of you who joined me behind the

curtain last Tuesday got to try Orange County’s new electronic voting

system, called eSlate. Notice the lower-case E. That’s very hip these

days.

Once you get the hang of it, eSlate is quick and easy, no muss, no

fuss, no bother. If there is a computer in your life, it’s a piece of

cake. You’re basically moving a cursor around a screen with a knob

then pushing the enter key when you land on the item you want. Turn,

push enter, turn, push enter. Get it? You got it.

eSlate is a direct-record voting system. When registrars of voting

dream, they dream of direct-record voting, which means that no one

has to read or count anything to determine who got how many votes.

The votes are electronically recorded on a card or chip in each

machine then downloaded into a single database at the end of the day.

No counting, no sorting, no chads -- hanging or otherwise.

So how did it go? Like greased lightning, a train on fire, a Swiss

watch, some other hackneyed cliche? Umm, not exactly.

As those of us who engage in hand-to-keyboard combat with

computers on a daily basis can attest, when it comes to new systems,

sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you. Actually,

eSlate did its job very well. It put the input in and put the output

out, you do the Hokey Pokey, that’s what it’s all about. Wait. Forget

that last part.

There were some humanoid-based problems, however, when a few

voters were given the wrong access code when they checked in. The

access code is what tells eSlate what ballot to pull up for your

precinct and your party registration. Perfectly understandable

though, considering it’s a complex new system being administered by

neighborhood volunteers. No. I stand corrected. For a day that runs

from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., poll workers get minimum wage. Yippee. They

also get a half-day of training. But as democracy goes digital,

registrars may need to consider more training and higher pay.

According to Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter

Foundation, “If we want high-tech voting, we need high-tech voting

centers with highly trained workers. We have this quaint notion of

our polling places.... Your neighbors. It’s a beautiful idea. I’d

love to hold on to it. But our elections are extremely complex”

I don’t know, Kim. I’m not giving up on the neighbors yet. I am

always muy impressed with their willingness to work a really long day

for very little thanks, with professionalism and a smile.

In truth, no voting system is now -- nor has it ever been, or will

ever be -- perfect.

Think fretting about a voting system is something new? Think

again.

The little beasts have been around for a good long time. The first

one in this country -- a mechanical lever system called the Myers

Automatic Booth -- made its debut in New York in 1892. By 1930, lever

machines were the standard across the country. Even if you never used

one personally, you’ve probably seen pictures of them. Behind the

curtain, it looked like an old-fashioned telephone switchboard, with

long rows of levers for each name or ballot measure.

It was really a mechanical adding machine that kept a running

total of all the votes cast in that booth for each name or ballot

measure. Mechanical voting machines fell out of favor over the years

as people realized that anyone with a small screwdriver and poor

values could wreak havoc with the totals on each machine, and there

was no “paper trail” to prove otherwise.

That gave birth to the preprinted ballot with a serial number that

tied it to a living, breathing voter, though not identifying them by

name. You either punched holes in the ballot with a stylus (see

“Florida, Nov. 2000, brain dead”) or with a punch machine, as we did

right here in Orange County before last Tuesday. But that got us back

to “counting,” by hand or machine, and all the problems associated

with it.

With the advent of computer voting, that old uneasy queasy feeling

about the fudge factor got worse, not better. In an age when a

13-year old hacker with bad acne can send a virus to half the

computers in the world in 90 seconds, the hypothetical scenarios for

tampering with computer voting systems can send a conspiracy theorist

into full on cardiac arrest.

So, what’s the answer? I don’t know. It will take someone much

smarter than I am, which could be almost anybody. In the meantime,

I’m sticking with eSlate. Turn, push enter, turn, push enter. I like

it. It’s relaxing, sort of.

And finally, thank you. Thank you so much. You’re much too kind.

No, really, stop, you’re making me blush. A number of you noted via

e-mail that my predictions for the Oscars were totally -- that’s

totally, as in 100% -- accurate, correct, right on.

But it would be immodest of me to mention that here, so I really

can’t. But thank you anyway.

For mentioning it that is -- the Oscars, six out of six, etc. --

because I can’t, not going to, wouldn’t be prudent. I gotta go.

* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs

Sundays. He may be reached by e-mail at [email protected].