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On the Issues: Election Reform and Paper Trail

Our goal must be to count votes -- not suppress them -- to open the system to all voters -- not intimidate them. We must commit the money, resources, and energy to fix our election process once and for all.

Congress must ensure that the American election system is the most accurate and fair in the world. But just nine years ago, it was not. On Election Day 2000, thousands of Floridians lost their right to vote because of a breakdown in our electoral system, a misleading and confusing ballot, and a tragic decision by the US Supreme Court that put politics above the Constitution.

Since that time, much progress has been made, but fixing the election system in America must continue to be a top national priority.  I am pleased that Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (Public Law 107-252), which is providing an infusion of $650 million of election assistance money to the states. (Florida's share is $26 million). In addition to providing federal funding for modern voting machines, the Act also requires states to have minimum election standards as well as equipment for physically disabled voters to cast secret ballots. While the significant investment made in modernizing our voting technology better ensures smooth elections, I am distressed that we are overlooking a significant problem that leaves us vulnerable to another election debacle.

Many computer experts and academics, as well as the U.S. Justice Department, have expressed concerns about the inability of electronic voting machines to provide a means for a recount under this law. When using touch-screen machines, once a person electronically submits his or her ballot there is no way for either the voter or election officials to know if the ballot was properly recorded. While touch-screen machines are programmed to record each ballot in a random order, we place unfounded trust in these machines to properly record each ballot correctly. In a recount without voter-verified paper ballots, the machines will only reprint the same results they recorded the first time. This simply means there is no way to confirm that the original results are correct, which is the essence of a recount. A reprint is not a recount.

For Florida, I had the great pleasure of joining Governor Charlie Crist at the signing of the bill to replace the disastrous voting system currently in use in 15 Florida counties. These 15 counties will be required to make the switch to paper ballot counted by optical scanners. Six and a half years after the national embarrassment of the butterfly ballot and three years after I first began my legal challenges to the paperless touch screens, all Florida voters will have a paper ballot. Each and every Floridian will now know with certainty that their vote is counted, and if necessary recounted, with a paper trail as required by Florida law. The Governor's decision to replace the touch-screen voting machines (DREs) is an unequivocal victory for those of us who have been fighting for years to bring election integrity and a paper trail to Florida.

Click here to see Congressman Wexler's press release on bringing a paper trail to Florida.

On the national level, I am a sponsor of the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2009 with Congressman Rush Holt, which would require voting systems to produce voter-verified paper records and authorize additional money for states to provide a voter-verified paper trail. The bill requires that voting systems meet all these new requirements and requires that voting systems for disabled people be available. The bill also makes the source codes for computerized voting systems available to the public and requires mandatory surprise recounts. Click here to see Congressman Wexler's press release on his efforts with Congressman Rush Holt to bring accountability to all national elections.

I am continuing to encourage my colleagues in Congress to pass this important legislation. Every American must be confident in the election process, and no state should suffer a repeat of Florida's 2000 election fiasco.

I am also a lead sponsor of H.R. 97, the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act of 2009, which works to prevent deceptive practices in elections across our country. It provides comprehensive definitions of what constitutes a deceptive practice; criminalizes such practices and states appropriate penalties; outlines an innovative system to help disseminate correct information to voters who have been victims of these practices; creates a reporting structure for incidents that will help citizens to address grievances; and calls on the Department of Justice to work with leading civil rights and voter protection organizations, other Federal agencies, and state officials to develop the most effective way to address this problem.