New Rules On Touchscreens & Paper Trails
The new rules proposed last month fall short when it comes to touchscreens (DREs). Here are three specifics:
1. A few conscientious auditors bought printers that create voter-verifiable paper trails (see this map), but there is no Iowa law on how to use them. The new rules tell these auditors to stick their heads in the sand. They say the paper trail must be sealed up immediately after the election. It must be destroyed after a given period as other ballots are destroyed. It must never be looked at!!!
This probably means no auditor will hook up the printer after this. To do so would be to deceive the public into thinking the paper provided some backup. We ought to scrap this new rule and have a different one: that paper trails may be unofficial records but they can still be used in unofficial audits to make sure the machines are behaving. At least the auditors would know and that is something.
2. When touchscreens are tested before the election, they are often tested in “test mode” instead of “election mode”. They don’t behave the same in both modes, as I witnessed in the Pocahontas county test in May. Official testing should be done in the same mode that will be used on election day, not in the mode used at the state fair booth to “WOW” the public.
3. There is no requirement to report how many votes have been cast on paperless DREs and how many were cast on paper ballots that went into a scanner. There should be, so that we can know the size of the problem of paperless voting in Iowa.
You can comment on these rules until Tuesday. Tell the Secretary of State to a) make good use of the paper trails while we pound on the legislature to pass a paper trail requirement; b) test equipment in election mode; and c) report the extent of touchscreen use.
Comments go to sos@sos.state.ia.us. Put the name of Sandy Steinbach in the message or the subject line.