Some Democrats are, understandably, nervous about this idea. Dill says that he's heard from party officials who tell him privately that they support him, but that they couldn't support the cause publicly for fear that it will turn voters away. In Florida, the party is giving voters mixed signals about what they should do. It won't say that the machines are buggy, or that people shouldn't trust them. Yet it has also supported a call for a paper trail. When asked about the party's position, Allie Merzer, a spokeswoman for the Florida Democratic Party, said, "We advocate for any system that increases voter confidence. All voters should have the right to have their vote counted." Merzer said that "in some instances" people had "valid" concerns about electronic voting machines. People who are concerned should vote using other methods, she suggested -- absentee ballots or early voting. In light of people's concerns, the party is "ramping up" its effort to sign people up for absentee ballots, Merzer said.

"Stupid Democrats -- with Democrats as dumb as this who needs Republicans?" counters Lida Rodriguez-Taseff. "They're running around afraid of their own shadows, not talking about the problems with the voting machines, thinking they can lie and manipulate the African-American community into voting for them."

Instead of being mealy-mouthed about the situation, Rodriguez-Taseff would like the Democrats to directly acknowledge and make clear to voters the problems associated with electronic machines. Only when it does this will the party be able to fix the problems, she says. And she thinks that a direct approach will bring more voters to the polls: "They should reach deep into the history of this situation," she says. "They really should be saying, 'Look, the lynch mob didn't scare you away from voting. Poll taxes didn't scare you away. Literacy tests didn't scare you away. Are you going to let a little voting machine scare you away?' Voting is a sign of defiance and courage. Voting at a voting machine even when the voting machine doesn't work is a sign of courage. But instead, they're choosing to lie to people. 'No, the lynch mob is not outside.' 'Oh yeah, your vote will be counted -- just vote for us.' People aren't stupid. And that's why people aren't going to go to the polls, because they're being lied to."

Rodriguez-Taseff also took issue with the Democrats' suggestion that people should vote using absentee ballots instead of going to the polls. Absentee ballots are not known to be any safer than electronic voting systems. Yes, there's a paper ballot -- but it can easily be thrown away, lost, misfiled, damaged, never counted, or be subjected to any number of other harms, whether intentional or accidental. Of course, there are security precautions to prevent these things; but if you're the sort of person who is wary about the security precautions meant to prevent electronic vote fraud, why wouldn't you be similarly wary of the precautions meant to prevent absentee-ballot vote fraud?

Rodriguez-Taseff says that she doesn't intend to vote absentee. With all that can go wrong with such a ballot, she'd prefer to take her chances with the computer. Ted Selker of MIT says the same thing. Indeed, Selker recounted a time he witnessed an incident of absentee ballot tampering in his own voting precinct in Massachusetts. After he cast his vote on one Election Day, he noticed a woman (probably an elections official or poll worker) sitting to the side, looking over a stack of ballots. He asked her what she was doing. "I'm checking the absentee ballots," the woman said, explaining that she was making sure that they were in good enough condition to be filed into the ballot reader. Selker asked her if she'd found any problems. "So she tells me, 'One of them couldn't be read, so I looked at it and I found a mark that wasn't right and I erased it,'" Selker says. "So you see, she changed somebody's ballot without anyone else's permission, on her own. And she admitted it to me. That's what I think about absentee ballots."

David Dill's home precinct in California uses a paper-based optical scan voting system, not an electronic touch-screen. If it did use a touch-screen, would he vote absentee? Dill is aware of the problems with absentee ballots, and choosing between absentee voting and paperless touch-screen voting would be especially difficult, he says. In the end, though, Dill says that he would probably take his chances with the absentee ballot. Rebecca Mercuri, the computer scientist who first developed the idea of a verified paper ballot and is quite skeptical of any machines that lack such a system, says that she, too, would vote absentee instead of on a touch-screen.

One of the few political groups that seems to have no deep division or concern about how people should vote in the upcoming election is the Republican Party. At both national and local levels, the GOP is consistent about what people should do -- they should go to the polls and vote, and they should trust their touch-screens. It is true that in July, the Florida Republicans sent some voters a flier urging them to register for absentee ballots. "The liberal Democrats have already begun their attacks and the new electronic voting machines do not have a paper ballot to verify your vote in case of a recount," said the flier, which featured a picture of President Bush. "Make sure your vote counts. Order your absentee ballot today." But the party immediately repudiated that message. Everything else that Republican officials -- including Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Glenda Hood, the Republican secretary of state -- have said indicates a deep trust in the elections systems as they are.

"That flier most definitely caused confusion," said Joseph Agostini, a spokesman for the Republican Party of Florida. He said that the person responsible for that confusion has "learned the hard way" what the Florida Republicans actually think about electronic voting. "It's something we regret that went out, and we've taken steps to make sure that this misunderstanding doesn't occur again," Agostini said. "Let me say without any uncertainty that we the Republican Party have complete confidence in the Florida election system and its accuracy. Whether it's opti-scan or touch-screen by Diebold, we have no doubts that the election will run smoothly."

If you're concerned with the security of electronic voting systems but you decide to vote on such a machine anyway, you can perhaps rest a bit easier this year, as the controversy surrounding the machines has already led to many extra security safeguards protecting the systems. In large part due to the activists' complaints over the lack of a paper trail, some of the most ill-regarded machines and manufacturers have been subjected to punishing scrutiny. Diebold's machines, for instance, have been thoroughly inspected by several computer researchers, and while many of the researchers found significant problems with the machines, it is at least comforting to know that elections officials and the company made some improvements to the systems. In Maryland, for example, the state and Diebold have implemented many of the safeguards proposed by RABA, a computer firm that found significant vulnerabilities in the Diebold system earlier this year. Linda Lamone, Maryland's election administrator, says that while she has not enjoyed being the subject of intense criticism over her decision to use Diebold's machines, "I like the opportunity to make things better."

Facing similar pressures from critics of electronic voting systems, Nevada Secretary of State Dean Heller decided last December to make his state the first in the nation to use paper-equipped touch-screen systems. The machines he chose are manufactured by Sequoia Voting Systems, and for the most part they work exactly how proponents of such systems have said all touch-screen systems should work: When a voter steps up to the system and casts a ballot on the touch-screen machine, a printer attached to the machine produces a ballot for the voter to review. (The ballot is printed under a glass screen in order to prevent the voter from walking off with it.) After the voter reviews this paper ballot, he or she can either accept or reject it on the touch-screen; either way, the ballot scrolls away into a locked compartment, and it's then considered the voter's official ballot, trumping whatever electronic ballot the touch-screen machine has stored. In the event that a recount is needed, the paper ballot tape would be counted by hand, and that count would become the ultimate election result, said Alfie Charles, a spokesman for Sequoia.

David Dill and Rebecca Mercuri say they're hopeful that the Nevada test will go well, but both said they thought there'd probably be some mishaps in the state, as there always are in such things. "I do not want the future of the paper-trail movement to be judged on how the machines do in Nevada," Dill said, though he conceded that this would probably happen. If the election in Nevada goes badly, people on the other side of the paper-trail debate will surely point to the race as proof that paper-trail systems can't work.

And, who knows, maybe they'd be right. Indeed, Mercuri said that she's been thinking for some time that even electronic machines equipped with a paper trail "are probably not the best way to vote," because "the touch-screen puts something between the voter and the actual construction of their ballots." For most able-bodied voters, both Mercuri and Dill said, fill-in-the-bubble optical-scan paper ballots are probably the best way to vote.

Many groups and both political parties plan to monitor polling places this year, and given the scrutiny they'll face, you can be sure that any irregularity, no matter how small, will be taken very seriously by officials. Verified Voting, David Dill's group, is calling for technically inclined people to volunteer to monitor precincts across the nation. Verified Voting is also creating a Web-based national error-reporting system, a central clearinghouse for people to report everything that goes wrong on Election Day; this will allow the group to spot when similar problems occur in different locations, say, or to keep track of a specific sort of glitch, giving activists a fuller picture of what happens on Election Day.

In Maryland, Linda Schade, the activist who has sued the state to prevent the Diebold machines from being used in November, says that in the event her suit is unsuccessful, she and her fellow Diebold critics will closely scrutinize what happens on Nov. 2. "I want to have a handful of people at every precinct dedicated to helping people, making sure they know what's going on, that all races are on the ballots, that voters go in with the information they need, and that there are people on hand when there are problems," she says.

Schade says she hopes everything goes well. But what if it doesn't? What if, for example, there's an unexpected result -- what if Maryland, which looks sure to choose Kerry, goes for Bush? Will anyone trust the machines?

In the end, that's the only real test of a voting system. Do people believe what it says, even when what it says seems unbelievable? "If we wake up the next day and Maryland has gone for Bush ...." Schade says, and her voice trails off. There's nothing more to say. The truth is, nobody really knows what will happen then.

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