Voting Rights: An Overview

The CQ Researcher • October 29, 2004 • Volume 14, Number 38
© 2004, CQ Press, a Division of Congressional Quarterly Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Retrieved from TC3 College Lib.,  November 20, 2004.

As the heated election between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry approaches, unprecedented concern surrounds the fairness of the voting process.

Republicans charge that Democrats are padding registration lists; Democrats say Republicans are trying to disenfranchise African-Americans, Hispanics, former felons and others thought likely to vote Democratic. Voting experts worry that new electronic voting machines are susceptible to tampering and do not allow for an accurate recount if the election is contested.

Indeed, four years after a vote-counting scandal in Florida had to be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court — and four decades after passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act — civil rights advocates say the voting rights of many Americans are still at risk.

Public confidence also has been undermined by persistent allegations of voter suppression, including attempts to intimidate minority voters to keep them from going to the nation's 193,000 polling places.

In the run-up to the election, both parties are dispatching thousands of poll watchers and lawyers to pounce on any possible voting irregularities, especially in the too-close-to-call “battleground” states. Meanwhile, the charges and countercharges are coming non-stop:

• In Colorado, the Republican secretary of state accused the Democratic attorney general of failing to investigate charges that his party is fraudulently registering ineligible voters. [1]
• In Pennsylvania, Republicans are suspicious of the Democratic governor's plan to dispatch government workers to monitor the polls. [2]
• In Michigan, a GOP state legislator, John Pappageorge, was quoted in July as saying, “If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election.” More that 80 percent of Detroit's electorate are African-Americans. [3]
• In Nevada and Oregon, GOP-sponsored groups registering voters were alleged to have systematically destroyed hundreds of registration forms filled out by Democrats. [4]
• Republicans claimed on Oct. 25 that Democratic partisans have engaged in more than 40 instances of protests, violence, vandalism and burglaries at Bush headquarters across the country since July, all aimed at intimidating GOP voters. [5]
• And Florida's Republican secretary of state was forced to withdraw a “purge list” of convicted felons, ineligible to vote under state law, after it was discovered that the list contained the names of many eligible — and likely Democratic — voters. [6]

These and similar reports have been appearing almost daily in the final weeks of Campaign 2004. “Both parties are very assiduously courting and trying to register new voters, and all sorts of lines are being crossed,” says Paul Herrnson, director of the Center for American Politics and Citizenship at the University of Maryland. “We have a polarized electorate, and the stakes are very high in this extremely competitive election, so people are resorting to things that they otherwise would not do.”

Congress responded to the 2000 Florida voting debacle by enacting the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). Signed by Bush on Oct. 29, 2002, the law authorized $3.89 billion to help states update their voting equipment in an effort to avoid the problems that plagued Florida in the 2000 election. [7]Poorly punched cards used in punch-card machines produced the infamous “hanging” and “pregnant” chads that made it difficult to count thousands of paper ballots. Many states used HAVA funds to replace outdated punch-card and lever-activated voting machines. Largely as a result, almost a third of the nation's voters will cast ballots electronically this year.

But the new machines are not foolproof, and critics say their failings may become apparent on Election Day. “HAVA was overly ambitious about upgrading the voting technology,” says Aviel D. Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University who has studied some of the new systems and found them susceptible to technical failure and tampering. “States purchased these machines, but nobody really looked at security. Now, most people realize that they moved too quickly.”

HAVA also required states to adopt procedures to ensure fair and accurate voting and set up the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to help states make the improvements and establish federal standards for election-equipment accuracy.

But even HAVA's strongest supporters concede that the law's impact may be overshadowed by the cloud of uncertainty about the integrity of the election process generated by the 2000 election debacle.

“The problems of 2000 got so much publicity that any progress made since then has often not been noticed,” says EAC Chairman DeForest B. Soaries Jr. And, although the law took effect two years ago, he adds, “More people know about hanging chads than know about HAVA.”

As it turned out, the problems exposed in 2000 went far beyond the Sunshine State. According to “What Is, What Could Be,” a post-election study by the California and Massachusetts Institutes of Technology, up to 6 million of the 100 million Americans who went to the polls on Nov. 7, 2000, might just as well have stayed home: Their ballots were never counted. The problems ranged from inadequate registration data and faulty voting equipment to inaccurate vote counts.

“Minority voters are more sensitive to the possibility of what happened in Florida and elsewhere in 2000,” says Julian Bond, chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). “It wasn't just Florida; it happened in many states across the country, and minority voters who were the victims are, of course, more sensitive to it.”

In this year's election not only will there be thousands of new voting machines but also many thousands of new voters trying to figure out how to use them. The closeness of the race has spurred organizers from both parties to mount aggressive voter-registration drives, especially in the battleground states, where polls suggest the addition of several thousand new voters could tip the balance in either direction. According to an Associated Press analysis, Democrats have registered more new voters than Republicans in all states except Florida, where the two parties are tied for new registrations. [8]The NAACP's National Voter Fund alone says it has registered 225,000 new voters this year. [9]

As new and long-time voters struggle to adjust to all the changes, the eyes of the world will be focused on both Florida and the nation. New grass-roots organizations, such as Election Protection — a civic group formed by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, People for the American Way Foundation and the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation — are enlisting thousands of volunteers to watch the polls and offer help to voters who encounter problems casting their votes.

Likewise, Republican groups plan to look for evidence of voter fraud. “We will have poll watchers in precincts all across the country who are trained to look out for any problems and report them immediately to the local officials,” said Robert Traynham, senior adviser to the Republican National Committee. [10]

International monitors also will scrutinize the U.S. vote. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a 55-nation security watchdog based in Vienna, Austria, plans to send 100 observers to follow the election.

If all the newly registered voters actually turn out on Nov. 2, there may be long lines at the polls, especially where voters face unfamiliar voting machines. [11]To avoid such logjams — and to ensure that there is a “paper trail” in case of recounts — the liberal, pro-Kerry group, MoveOn.org, and other voting-rights advocacy groups for weeks have been urging voters to send in absentee ballots.

As concern about the upcoming election mounts, here are some of the questions being asked by voters'-rights advocates, election officials and policymakers.

Are voting irregularities by party operatives undermining the election system?

The 1965 Voting Rights Act took action against the most egregious forms of voter intimidation and suppression, notably the poll taxes, literacy tests and other obstacles many Southern states had erected after the Civil War to keep former slaves away from the voting booth. But activists quickly found ways to circumvent the law and prevent African- and Native Americans — as well as recent immigrants and other minority groups — from voting.

Such practices are still common, and not just in the South. The People for the American Way Foundation and the NAACP recently released a compendium of alleged voter intimidation and suppression over the past decade that have occurred around the country. In California and other states with large immigrant populations, anti-immigrant activists have deployed uniformed security guards in heavily Hispanic precincts warning would-be voters that election officials “will be watching.” In New York, Philadelphia and other cities, streets signs have appeared before Election Day threatening illegal voters with prosecution and deportation. Fliers encouraging citizens to come to the polls — a day or two after Election Day — have cropped up in minority neighborhoods. [12]

“There is some fairly specific evidence of those kinds of things happening, especially in the last couple of years,” says Elliot Mincberg, legal director of People for the American Way. As recently as last year, during the Philadelphia mayoral election, he says, people dressed in official-looking uniforms and carrying clipboards asked voters for identification outside several polling stations in minority precincts. “Nine percent of African-Americans in Philadelphia's central city area reported that they had encountered somebody like that,” Mincberg says. “That sort of intimidation continues to happen.”

Not all efforts to prevent voters from exercising their rights are illegal. “Both federal law and most state laws bar voter suppression and intimidation,” Mincberg says. “But when does something cross the line to become prohibited activity? It's certainly not illegal for people to challenge other people at the polls, but there comes a point where that goes too far. Wholesale challenges at the poll and intimidating activities, as in Philadelphia, are illegal under the federal Voting Rights Act and most states' laws.”

Unlike the era before the civil rights movement, most allegations of voter intimidation today are aimed at Republicans, who stand to lose if African-Americans, Hispanics and other minority groups show up in droves on Election Day. “What used to be a Democratic practice until the late 1960s of frightening, scaring, intimidating and terrorizing minority voters has now become an exclusive Republican practice,” says the NAACP's Bond, who also played a key role in the civil rights movement that led to passage of the Voting Rights Act. “There is abundant evidence to back that up.”

Democratic supporters are not the only ones making that claim. Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research institution that focuses on issues surrounding citizen engagement in politics, agrees. “There's plenty of historical evidence that the Republican Party has resorted to tactics that come close to intimidation,” he says.

The usual victims of alleged voter suppression — blacks and Native Americans — tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic. [13]And 64 percent of Hispanics favor Democrats — except in South Florida, where the large Cuban-American community favors Republicans — according to the Zogby International polling firm. [14]

GOP spokesmen deny that their party is involved in voter suppression and intimidation. “We certainly don't condone any alleged voter intimidation,” says Traynham. “That is not something that the Republican Party wants to be associated with, and it's obviously something that we do not condone.”

Indeed, Republicans charge that Democrats fraudulently register ineligible voters to boost the ranks of potential supporters of Democratic candidates. “We are concerned about our friends on the other side doing just that,” Traynham says.

But Gans says the number of instances of fraudulent registration by supporters of Democratic candidates is far outweighed by reports of voter intimidation by Republicans. “Voter fraud is not non-existent,” Gans says, “but it's not a huge problem.”

Some political observers say voter intimidation and fraud are not sufficiently widespread to seriously undermine credibility in the country's election system. “I've heard reports from all over the country that leaflets are put in minority communities announcing that Election Day will be one or two days after it really is,” says Larry J. Sabato, a politics professor and director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “Leaflets in Hispanic areas tell voters to be sure to bring their immigration papers to the polls. There's also no question that Democratic operatives visit nursing homes and find an incredible number of Democratic votes there in some places. But let's keep things in perspective. We're talking about a relatively small effort affecting a relatively tiny portion of the electorate.”

But to some election officials, intimidation and fraud — however widespread they may be — damage the U.S. election system's credibility. “The negative impact of suspicion and the acrimony caused by these activities cannot be underestimated,” says Election Assistance Commission Chairman Soaries. Although he served as the New Jersey secretary of state in the Republican administration of former Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, he and fellow commissioners have agreed to refrain from all political activity as long as they serve on the commission.

“The onus is on us, who are responsible for the rights of voters, to demonstrate to the American people that we assume that responsibility without regard to political or partisan interests,” he says.

Should felons who have completed their sentences continue to be denied the right to vote?

Voting rights have been expanded over the years through constitutional amendments and laws, culminating in the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But the Constitution leaves the administration of elections up to the individual states, and in seven states convicted felons are still not allowed to vote — even after they have finished serving their sentences.

Felon-disenfranchisement laws are relics of Jim Crow laws that emerged in the post-Civil War South. They gained legal strength from the U.S. Supreme Court in a 1974 opinion penned by Associate Justice (now Chief Justice) William H. Rehnquist in Richardson v. Ramirez. The court found that Section 2 of the 14th Amendment, which granted citizenship to former slaves after the Civil War, authorized states to deny voting rights to anyone convicted of a crime.

To prevent former slave states from denying these new citizens the right to vote, Section 2 stipulates that whenever a state denies voting rights to otherwise qualified inhabitants, it will lose representation in Congress in direct proportion to the number of citizens denied the right to vote — except when that right is denied because of “participation in rebellion or other crime.” Rehnquist's opinion interpreted that provision as an exception to the amendment's Equal Protection Clause and determined that it allowed states to disenfranchise felons.

Today, including the seven states that bar convicted felons from voting after they have served their time, a total of 48 states restrict felons' voting rights in some way or another, such as requiring ex-felons to apply to the governor for special dispensation.

Challenged by civil rights activists, felon disenfranchisement continues to be hotly debated. The Supreme Court returned to the issue in 1985, ruling in Hunter v. Underwood that while states can deny felons the right to vote, they cannot do so if it can be shown that the disenfranchisement was racist in intent. Since that ruling, challenges to felon disenfranchisement laws have mounted.

“The core argument in most of these cases is that the disenfranchisement laws were both racist in intent as well as racist in practice,” says Ryan S. King, research associate at the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit, criminal-justice advocacy group. Most felon disenfranchisement challenges are based on the Voting Rights Act, which bars the denial of those rights on the basis of race.

Civil rights advocates are focusing on a Washington state case pending before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that the Voting Rights Act does, in fact, recognize a state law's practical impact on individuals' ability to vote. (The case was remanded to the lower court for a determination of whether the facts in the case show that felon disenfranchisement in Washington is having a discernible impact on voting rights.)

“There are still challenges out there,” King says. “But the Constitution does still permit felon disenfranchisement.”

Whatever the outcome of the legal challenges, state laws barring felons from voting unquestionably reduce the turnout of black and Hispanic Americans at the polls. The Sentencing Project estimates that about 5 million Americans cannot vote due to felony disenfranchisement laws, and African-Americans are disproportionately denied their voting rights under the laws. Black men, who comprise about 8 percent of the U.S. population, account for 40 percent of the prison population. [15]

Southern states have some of the most sweeping laws disenfranchising African-Americans. In Atlanta alone, the Sentencing Project reports, 14 percent of the city's black male inhabitants are unable to vote because they are in prison, on probation or on parole.

“We know that these laws . . . were imposed as Reconstruction was closing down, and that their purpose was then to limit the votes of the newly freed slaves,” says Bond of the NAACP. “We also know that they've remained in place because they serve the present-day purpose of disproportionately discriminating against racial minorities.”

The denial of voting rights to convicted felons does not stop at the Mason-Dixon Line, however. According to the Rhode Island Family Life Center, 20 percent of that state's African-American men and more than 10 percent of its Hispanic men cannot vote because they have been convicted of a felony. The vast majority — 86 percent — are no longer in prison. [16]In Ohio, after prisoner-rights groups sued the state, it notified 34,000 felons on parole and probation that they are, in fact, allowed to vote next month. The lawsuit had charged that the felons had been wrongly told they were ineligible to vote. Ohio law disenfranchises felons only while they are in prison. [17]

Civil rights activists say felon disenfranchisement should end, as it does in Ohio, when a convicted felon has served the sentence meted out by his peers in a court of law — and that they should not have to apply for special dispensation to vote. “Rules saying felons cannot vote unless they apply for special permission are vestiges of segregation and discrimination being used to try to make it more difficult for minorities to vote,” says Mincberg of the ACLU. “Someone who has been convicted of a crime and has served his time, is becoming a citizen and is paying taxes, ought to have his right to vote restored.”

But supporters of felon disenfranchisement say it is a just form of punishment for serious crime. “Just because a criminal serves his time in prison — 'pays his or her debt to society' — does not mean that society has to ignore the fact that the individual has seriously breached the social contract,” wrote Roger Clegg, general counsel at the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity in Sterling, Va. “People who are not willing to follow the law should not be allowed to make the law for others, which is what voting is. The right to vote can be earned back by those who committed a less serious felony — though all felonies are serious, by definition — and thereafter keep a clean record, but that determination should be made case by case.” [18]

Other supporters of felon-disenfranchisement laws argue that felons do not deserve to have the same say on matters regarding law-enforcement policies as law-abiding citizens. “It is simply false to say that a felon has served his entire debt to society upon the completion of his prison sentence,” said Todd F. Gaziano, director of the Center for Legal & Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. “The fact that so many states have these felon-disenfranchisement laws is strong evidence that many citizens do not want their ability to influence crime-control decisions to be diluted by convicted felons on parole or otherwise.” [19]

Some governors intent on gaining minority support for their parties' candidates in this fall's election are emphasizing their records in restoring voting rights to felons. Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, a Democrat, for instance, recently announced that he had restored the voting rights of 1,892 convicted felons.

But civil rights advocates are not impressed. “The governor of Virginia has just congratulated himself for allowing [1,892] felons to vote,” Bond says. “But when thousands of other ex-felon Virginians are still kept from voting, his self-congratulation is just a little much.”

Do electronic voting machines help Americans exercise their right to vote?

States, counties and localities decide what kind of voting machines will be used in their precincts. But after hanging chads and inscrutable “butterfly ballots” disrupted the vote count in Florida in 2000, election officials across the country have tried to modernize their voting equipment. HAVA authorized $3.89 billion in 2001 to help states improve their election systems, but so far only about $2 billion has been disbursed to the states, much of it to buy the latest in electronic voting machines. [20]

So-called direct-recording electronic (DRE) systems offer several advantages over earlier technology. With systems like those used in Florida in 2000, the voter uses a stylus to punch a hole in a card next to the chosen candidate. Most new electronic machines, on the other hand, work like a bank ATM: The voter simply touches a box on the screen next to the candidate's name. If the machine senses the touch, the vote is tabulated; if not, the voter tries again until the machine registers his choice.

Almost 30 percent of American voters will cast their votes this November on new electronic equipment, according to Election Data Services, a political consulting firm.

Electronic machines are hardly foolproof, however. Most of them produce no “paper trail” because they eliminate paper from the voting process. In January, paperless, touch-screen voting machines used in Florida's Broward County (Fort Lauderdale), failed to record 134 ballots cast in a special election where the margin of victory was just 12 votes. With no paper trail, a recount was impossible. [21]In May, a computer chip coding error caused one candidate to receive all the votes cast in a local election in Arkansas. [22]

Critics say many states moved too quickly to replace older voting devices with electronic machines. “One of the big dangers is that there will be some kind of glitch or unintentional bug in the machines, and they just won't get the right answer,” says Rubin, at Johns Hopkins University, who was one of the first experts to expose the flaws in electronic voting systems. “In that case we'll have no recourse, because there won't be a paper trail or any way to audit them to determine the real results. What will we do on Nov. 3 if the results we get from a lot of precincts just don't make any sense?”

Moreover, says Mincberg, elderly or marginally literate voters may find the new technology confusing or hard to use. “The machines may be intimidating to some voters, partly because of all the concern about the machines' reliability, and partly because they are just more complex,” he says.

But Soaries of the EAC contends that voters with impaired vision or arthritis in their hands might have had more trouble using the punch-card system, with its stylus and small print. “The touch-screen machine is not as challenging as some might imagine, even among the elderly,” he says.

To ensure that the machines will improve voters' ability to exercise their rights, the EAC is pressing election officials to let voters practice in as many settings as possible before they go to the polls. “In Florida, Nevada and other states that have gone to all electronic equipment, they're taking the machines to churches, shopping malls and other places to ensure that people practice using the equipment before Election Day,” Soaries says.

And the efforts are paying off, he says. “Elderly people I saw using touch-screen machines for the first time in Nevada's primary a few weeks ago were thrilled,” he says. “Election officials there were not surprised by that reaction because there had been so much voter education taking place in the state.”

But non-government analysts say that few voters have had a chance to acquaint themselves with the new machines. “Any time you move from one technology to another, there is an adjustment that takes place, and very few polling places are offering voters the opportunity to practice,” says Herrnson, of the Center for American Politics and Citizenship at the University of Maryland.

Herrnson is leading a study comparing voting machines and ballot styles, but the results will not be released until after this year's election. “For some voters, particularly those who are not used to computers, the learning curve may be steep.”

Some critics say the lack of a paper trail is a major, if fixable, flaw in electronic voting machines that will arise if a close election prompts recounts. “The only way that you can maintain a checkable election is with a paper trail,” says election expert Gans.

Verified Voting, a grass-roots movement, is calling for the use of voter-verified paper ballots for all elections. “Our primary concern is the threat that unverifiable electronic voting poses to elections in the United States,” the group states. “What if the miscounts we know of are only the tip of an undetected iceberg of electronic miscounts? They might be. We have no way of knowing.” [23]

Nevada is the only jurisdiction to have adopted in time for this fall's election a statewide system of electronic machines that produce paper records of each vote. California recently passed a law mandating a paper trail on all its electronic voting machines by 2006. On Oct. 25, a federal judge in Florida threw out a lawsuit that would have required voter-verified paper ballots on touch-screen machines. However, several states are considering mandating paper trails on any e-voting system they may purchase. [24]Meanwhile, a bill by Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., to require paper records in all U.S. voting precincts has not garnered enough support for passage.

A nationwide mandate that all voting devices provide a paper trail would infringe on the states' authority to administer elections, say critics of the bill. “It is an appropriate role for the federal government to help the states secure the kind of technology that they need because that's an extension of voting rights,” Soaries says. “However, when we get into things that should best be defined locally, like voting equipment, that's when the federal government should not overstep its bounds because the country's so diverse. In Nevada they adopted a paper trail because Nevadans decided that if they could secure their gambling machines, they could secure their voting machines. But Nevada has a different culture than New Hampshire or Georgia.”

For his part, Gans is unconvinced that even the Nevada machines can ensure an accurate vote count. “From my point of view, the only two valid systems are optical scans * and paper ballots,” Gans says.

In any event, some election experts say the technology used at the polls is less important than the individual voter's responsibility to use it correctly. “One of the lessons the electorate learned in 2000 is that they themselves had made most of the mistakes,” says Sabato of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. He observed the Florida recount, which involved optical scanners as well as punch-card ballots. “Some of the machines malfunctioned, but most of the discounted votes were filled out — or not filled out — by real people.”

The key to overcoming technical barriers to accurate and fair elections, Sabato says, is voter education. His center runs a voter-education program in all 50 states with 1.5 million student participants. “We should have been doing this decades ago,” he says. “It's a long, hard process taking students to the local registrar and letting them use the voting machines. But it will have an impact in 10 or 15 years.”

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Go to Background

[1] Valerie Richardson, “Colorado to Tackle Voter-Fraud Fears,” The Washington Times, Oct. 14, 2004.

[2] ”Rendell to Put State Bureaucrats at Election Offices; Republicans Suspicious of Move,” freerepublic.com, Oct. 14, 2004.

[3] The Associated Press, “Democrats Blast GOP Lawmaker's 'suppress the Detroit vote' remark,” The Detroit Free Press, July 21, 2004.

[4] Adam Goldman, “Executive Denies Voter-Registration Forms Destroyed in Nevada,” San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 13, 2004.

[5] David D. Kirkpatrick, “Republicans Claim Democrats Are Behind Office Attacks,” The New York Times, Oct. 26, 2004, p. A 19.

[6] Garrett Therolf, “Voter-Purge List of Felons Made Public,” The Tampa Tribune, July 3, 2004.

[7] For background on the 2000 election, see Kathy Koch, “Election Reform,” The CQ Researcher, Nov. 2, 2001, pp. 897-920.

[8] See Robert Tanner, “Democrats Signing Up More New Voters,” The Associated Press, Oct. 18, 2004.

[9] NAACP National Voter Fund press release, Oct. 6, 2004.

[10] “Worldwide Scrutiny Is Coming to the U.S. National Election,” The New York Times, Oct. 10, 2004.

[11] For background, see Tom Price, “Cyberpolitics,” The CQ Researcher, Sept. 17, 2004, pp. 757-780.

[12] People for the American Way and NAACP, “Special Report: The Long Shadow of Jim Crow: Voter Intimidation and Suppression in America Today,” Aug. 25, 2004.

[13] See Patrick Reddy, “Analysis: Black Vote Key to Kerry's Charge,” Insight on the News, March 2, 1004.

[14] John Zogby, “Hispanic Vote,” Zogby International, www.zogby.com.

[15] See Darryl Fears, “In Atlanta, 14% of Black Men Can't Vote,” The Washington Post, Sept. 23, 2004.

[16] Marshall Clement and Nina Keough, “Political Punishment: The Consequences of Felon Disenfranchisement for Rhode Island Communities,” Rhode Island Family Life Center, Sept. 23, 2004.

[17] See Scott Hiaasen, “Ohio Will Notify Parolees by Letter That They Can Vote,” The [Cleveland] Plain Dealer, Sept. 14, 2004, p. B1.

[18] From a letter to the editor, The Washington Post, June 24, 2004, p. A24.

[19] Todd F. Gaziano, “Election Reform,” March 14, 2001, posted at www.heritage.org.

[20] See Price, op. cit.

[21] See Erika Bolstad, “New System No Easy Touch for 134 Voters in Broward,” The Miami Herald, Jan. 8 2004.

[22] See LeAnn Askins, “Commission OKs Results of Elections,” Jonesboro [Arkansas] Sun, May 28, 2004.

[23] See www.verifiedvoting.org.

[24] See Susan Llewelyn Leach, “E-voting Machines' Confidence Gap,” The Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 4, 2004, p. 11.

* Optical-scanning machines count ballots marked by voters.