Paper ballot bill would prevent vote machine election fraud

By Thom White

AUSTIN April 23, 2007 -- A Texas representative has introduced a bill in the state house that would provide for paper ballots for all state elections, and require that votes are counted in a public process with citizen oversight to prevent vote count fraud.

Rep. Lon Burnam (D-Ft. Worth) has offered up House Bill 3894, “The Texas Hand Counted Paper Ballot Bill of 2007.” The innovative new initiative would put an end to the election fraud reported since the introduction of electronic voting machines in 2000. “Millions of Americans believe both the 2000 presidential election and the 2004 presidential election were stolen through voter machine manipulation,” Rep. Burnam told KXAN-TV.

New laws have been proposed across the country to require a “paper trail” for vote tabulation on the voting machines. Karen Renick and Vickie Karp of Vote Rescue, an Austin-based grassroots organization hoping to reintroduce the paper ballot, say printouts from electronic voting machines may merely mask vote fraud that can be carried out before the final vote tally is calculated and printed.

There are financial benefits to Rep. Burnam’s paper ballot bill and Vote Rescue says that counties will save “tremendous amounts of taxpayers money by eliminating the budget-breaking costs of machine maintenance, storage and replacement, as well as the costs of training, programming, yearly software license fees, support services, and transportation.” This money is currently being diverted from taxpayers’ pockets to privately-run voting machine manufacturers so it is certain these private interests will oppose a return to the simpler days of a transparent vote tabulation.

Software and programming on the voting machines remain trade secrets of the manufacturers and there are only a few companies that have state contracts to provide electronic voting machines: Diebold, Inc. of Canton, Ohio, and ES&S of Omaha, Nebraska, are two leading companies.

Just as the jury system limits the corruption of a judge, a paper ballot and public hand count of the votes will eliminate fraud and other funny business that can happen with electronic voting machines that operate using secret software.

There would be new costs with the public oversight process that is part of Rep. Burnam’s bill, and Vote Rescue “is currently conducting a comparative cost study of elections using either electronic voting systems, including optical scan counters, or hand-counted paper ballots.”

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