Statement of Robert F. Bennett

Hearing: Hearing on The Hazards of Electronic Voting: Focus on the Machinery of Democracy
Wednesday, February 7, 2007

I appreciate the opportunity to be here and I congratulate you formally, Madame Chairman, on the first public meeting of the committee and on your appointment as the committee’s chair.

Let me point out that Utah has a voter verification paper system, and I used it for the first time to vote in the 2006 elections. So I have a degree of personal experience with it. Let me also point out that the screen design outlining instructions on to how to use the machine is very important. When I went to vote in Utah, I had a hard time understanding what I was supposed to do. Before, I had always gone in and punched the card or made the X on the paper ballot, as I’m old enough to remember those. And I was about to go to the election officials and say, “Wait a minute, there’s something wrong. I put my card into the designated slot on the voting machine, and the screen doesn’t come up.” Then I realized I was putting my card in the wrong way.

I know about the concern in Sarasota County, Florida. I have looked at the screen design for the ballot used in the county, and I found it confusing. So, I can understand the arguments of those who say that the screen design contributed significantly to the under-vote. This confusion is not limited only to the voting technology. When I go online to pay my bills, rather than with a check, there are some displays that are easy to follow. For my electric bill, I almost have to be reinstructed every month because I forget from month to month how it is I get into the place where I pay the bill electronically. I think the person that developed the software also designed the screen. I recommend that they get somebody from the marketing department to redesign the screen so that you can understand it and know where you need to go.

The point of all this is to underscore that this is a very valuable hearing. It’s an important hearing, but we should not focus solely on the technology because the machines are idiots -- that is, they do not think. They do exactly what they’re told, and if they’re told to do something stupid, they do something stupid. If there’s something confusing programmed into them, they don’t correct it; they just leave it confusing. We, therefore, must be careful about saying that optical scan machines are the way to go because an optical scan system assumes a degree of accuracy on the part of the voter who is wielding the pencil. We all have the visions of hanging chads from Florida in 2000. We are running the risk of seeing the vision of dots in the wrong place, Xs where there should be filled-in circles or rectangles, or circles around names when there should not be circles. We are expecting technology to solve the problems that in many cases are caused by inaccurate instruction, confusing ballot design, or simple human error. It is essential to remember that having well-designed procedures and able personnel in place to safeguard against voter confusion, system breakdowns, and election fraud is just as important, if not more so, than the particular voting technology used. With those caveats, I join you Madame Chairman in welcoming our witnesses and look forward to the hearing.