As I reviewed the past two months' e-voting coverage at Ars and other sources for this pre-election wrap-up on the state of electronic voting, a depressing sense of déjà vu began to set in. I realized at some point that all of the currently reported problems—the vote-flipping, the long lines, the lack of audit trails, the security problems, the indifference (and, in some cases, belligerent incompetence) of local elections officials—are simply repeats of elections and primaries past. I could drag out ten or so articles from the 2002 midterms through the primaries of 2008, change only the dates, and we'd have a pretty good description of the present problems with early voting in this election.

But despite the awful feeling that I've spent the past six years repeating myself to no avail, I'll proceed with brief highlights of a few of the important challenges facing tomorrow's election.

The state of play

VerifiedVoting.org is the go-to source for the raw data on the state of America's voting machinery. As of today, only 18 states have the combination of voter-verified paper record (VVPR) and mandatory audits that are the minimum requirements for an election in which the state can hope to meet its burden of proof of election integrity.

Of the remaining states, 13 require that machines produce a VVPR, but they do not mandate a random audit of the results. In other words, they've mandated a mechanism for carrying out an audit (i.e., the VVPR, the sole purpose of which is to assist in an audit), but then they don't actually take the next logical step and mandate the audit itself. As I've argued before, this is just like buying a burglar alarm for your house, and then never turning it on.

The remaining states, Ohio and Pennsylvania among them, require neither a VVPR nor an audit. In other words, the barn door is open in these states, though in some of them (like Ohio), VVPR-enabled machines are widely used even though state law doesn't mandate them.

So, to summarize, we've made 18 states worth of progress in the past few years. I guess I should be happier about that than I am.

It's worth remembering that this past January, Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) sponsored a bill that was a last-ditch effort to provide funds to move all 50 states away from paperless (and unauditable) electronic voting machines in advance of Tuesday's election. The bill was voted down by House Republicans on a party line vote.

Deja vu: vote flipping and lines



Vote flipping made an appearance on The Simpsons

More and more reports have emerged of vote flipping, and the typical response from experts on e-voting blogs has been to fault touchscreen calibration issues. However, a comprehensive report on problems with the 2006 midterms detailed how some of the vote-flipping reports from those elections could not be attributed to calibration. Specifically, many of the e-voting machines that exhibited this problem use alternative input methods like jog wheels.

As usual, most of the vote-flipping problems seem to be occurring on machines produced by ES&S. This company and its problem-riddled iVotronic touchscreens were thrown out of Florida in the wake of the FL-13 controversy.

Ultimately, the cause of the phenomenon—calibration, widespread user error, software glitches, tampering—is secondary to the fact that it has been repeatedly documented since 2006 and yet it persists. Will Ars be reporting on vote-flipping problems in the 2010 midterms? At this rate, it seems certain that it will.

Sort of like waiting in line at the Apple Store, but for a constitutional right

Punitively long lines are also making the news once again, as the elderly are forced to stand in line up to ten hours to cast their vote. Any number of bloggers and news outlets are covering this issue, but I want to highlight an amazing video clip, posted on the BradBlog.

In this clip, the Democratic head of Philadelphia's elections ridicules the interviewer for suggesting that there's a problem with people standing in line for ten hours to vote.

"Did you see people waiting for baseball tickets, all night long outside?," said Marge Tartaglione asked her interviewer. "Did you see the line when they wanted the new iPod, they all waited overnight and waited in line? You go to the supermarket, you see people waiting in line. They complain, they grumble—some of them. Some of them just talk. So, what is the difference?"

At this point, her incredulous interviewer asked for clarification. "I'm sorry, are you comparing voters who possibly have to work during the day to people who are standing in line to get an iPod or a Phillies ticket?"

"Yeah it's the same people!," Tartaglione replied. "Same people! Same people! C'mon, you're mixing apples with oranges. Sit down."

Later in the video, a voter reports that two out of three voting machines in her precinct were broken, a problem that exacerbated the line situation.

Voter registration fraud? Get a grip

I once caused a huge hubub at airport security when a dim TSA worker pulled a wireframe book stand out of my backpack and stopped the entire line to interrogate me about the nature and purpose of this sinister-looking device. As I was being grilled by a tense, suspicious agent and her supervisor, I thought to myself, "if I can hijack an airplane with this object that you have in your hand, then we're all just completely screwed. Seriously. Get a grip."

That's how I felt on my recent trip to New York, when I sat on a JetBlue flight and watched the Fox News Channel's nonstop hysteria over ACORN and alleged voter registration fraud. If any random homeless person can go to a state building, pick up a stack of freely available voter registration forms that anyone can get in any quantity they like, and then use those forms to vote multiple times and throw an election, then we're all just screwed.

But "voter registration fraud" does not equal "vote fraud." Just because anyone who can operate a ballpoint pen can register multiple times under multiple bogus names, that does not mean that they can vote multiple times under multiple bogus names.

But rather than wade into this issue, which is a separate one from the vote fraud issue that I normally track, I'll now turn the mic over to the Atlanta Journal Constitution's op-ed page. I read this editorial the other day, and it's a good take on the situation and what can be done to resolve it. Yes, let's shut down ACORN, and every other private voter registration group, so that we can hand this function over to the federal government.

In the end, a even a cursory perusal of e-voting stories on Ars, Wired's Threat Level, or the BradBlog will paint a picture of a national voting apparatus in shambles. The infrastructure of our democracy is fragile, unprepared for a massive turnout, and shamefully insecure. As in years past, it's a national disgrace. And as in years past, here's to hoping it's fixed the next time.