Why the US electoral system should adopt biometric technology

Image: Freedigitalphotos

It is a known fact that the American electoral system is far from seamless. Its many flaws become evident every time there is an election, but nothing is done to address these problems in spite of their recurrence. One of the most controversial issues is the one related to identification at the polling stations and its role in fraud prevention.

According to David Frum, commentator for CNN, “Americans worry more about voter fraud than do voters in other countries, because they are the only country without a reliable system of national identification. In no other country, including federal systems such as Germany, Canada and Australia, does the citizen’s opportunity to vote depend on the affluence and competence of his or her local government.” Frum calls the American electoral system a “disgrace.”

Currently, most of the states of the Union do not require photo identification in order to grant access to everyone to the polling stations. On paper this sounds like a good anti-discrimination policy, but in reality it poses a high risk of electoral fraud. 

Meanwhile, states that implemented have been criticized as championing a tool of disenfranchisement against the poor. As a result, only 55% of Americans are able to vote nowadays. At first glance, the situation looks like a double-edge sword, but in fact the solution is as simple as effective: biometric authentication.

Biometric authentication systems are not a thing of the future: they have already been implemented in countries like Venezuela, Ghana, and Brazil. Even Mexico, one of America’s closest neighbors, has been able to register 95% of its population (77 million people) with the use of biometric identity cards. 

Recently, professor Robert A. Pastor wrote an article in the Los Angeles Times where he stated that implementing a biometric card not only could solve voter fraud but also it could help to tackle the delicate issue of illegal immigration. America faces a true challenge in its crusade to improve its voting process, and biometric authentication could be the first step to correct one of the many flaws that have hindered the Nation from becoming an example of efficiency in electoral administration.

Electronic voting makes it into TED

Mr. Bismark during his talk. Photo: TED

Since 1990 TED has held conferences in different cities of the United States to address an array of topics related to Technology, Entertainment and Design. Using a rather informal setting, guest speakers present ideas and demonstrate their expertise in presentations lasting 18 minutes at most. 

In July, 2010, David Bismark attended TED to present a system he designed along with some colleagues, to guarantee transparent and verifiable elections. According to Bismark, the problem his e-voting system addresses is the difficulty each voter encounters to know that his/her vote was recorded accurately and that it actually counted correctly, while remaining anonymous. 

This new system relies on the use of a Precinct Count Optical Scanner machine to capture the intention of the voter. What is innovative about it is the design and particularities of the printed ballot it uses. Voters receive a ballot in which candidates are on the left side, and the ovals/square to mark the preference and a 2D encryption bar are on the right side. Once the voter marks his option, he/she proceeds to tear the ballot through the middle. The right part of the ballot, where options are marked, is scanned and then returned to the voter to keep as a registry of the vote. Now, not all ballots are the same. Candidates are randomly organized in the left side of the ballots, so once the ballot is divided into two separate pieces, nobody can tell for which candidate the marked vote is related to.

Although the system is quite inventive, it does not address many of the issues that are important in a electronic voting system. From the moment the voter arrives to the precinct, to the moment results are announced, an election involves 7 main steps: Authentication of the voter, activation of the voting session, voting, counting of the votes, results collection, consolidation and proclamation. 

During Bismark's presentation, he failed to mention any special mechanisms to address security in the results collection, consolidation and proclamation processes. If in fact, his system has solved security issues in those steps, the authentication and session activation are still manual processes prompt to suffer human error, be it involuntary or intentional.

Also, by utilizing PCOS, the voter cannot be completely sure the vote was properly accounted for. As opposed to machines that directly record the vote, a scanner works as an interpreter. Interpreters open the possibility for error. 

One last inconvenience we see in this system is the fact that ballot printing is one of the most onerous costs for electoral commissions. Printing different models of ballots so that the right side of the ballot cannot be associated to any candidate, once separated into two, represents a heavy burden for the finances of the elections commissions.

ID at the Polling Station

As the world moves towards greater levels of efficiency and transparency in election administration, electoral authorities have had to work with legislative bodies to accommodate the necessary reforms of legal frameworks to make those improvements possible. Such is the case of countries like the Philippines, Belgium, Mongolia, Estonia, Switzerland, which have introduced important technological solutions to their election systems lately.

Surprisingly, the United States of America, a nation which has been an inspiration to democracies around the world is still tangled in a political debate that is hindering progress on a much needed election administration transparency. The lack of a non-partisan centralized institution managing elections is hurting the nation’s ability to conduct fair and transparent electoral processes.

The voter ID requirement is a clear example of the faulty electoral system the US has and the problem of partisan election bodies represent. For decades, the country has struggled to strike a balance point between voter enfranchisement and election transparency, between access and integrity. The core of the controversy lies behind the tendency among Republicans to consider that requiring ID to citizens at the polling station before voting is a valid measure to prevent voter impersonation and increase voter confidence, while, on the other hand, many Democrats believe the measure is a political strategy to disenfranchise eligible voters and a form of vote suppression of the minorities, which “coincidentally” vote democrat.

For the last couple of decades, many Republican senators, congressmen and governors, have claimed that electoral fraud has occurred persistently in many US counties. However, they have failed to compile irrefutable evidence of such fraud accusations. Democrats believe fraud, although existing, is non-relevant and that the voter identification laws which Republicans favor will do more harm than good as they will not deter significant amounts of fraud.

In this regard, the United States of America, could very well look up to Venezuela, a country which has a central authority assuming the responsibility of granting everyone the right to vote (more than 90% of eligible voters are registered). Moreover, the South American country will become the first nation in the world activating the voting session by means of a biometric identification device. Venezuela will soon be able to guarantee the one voter one vote principle.

As a curious note, Venezuela and the United States will be holding Presidential elections only a month apart (October and November) between an incumbent president and a contesting candidate. However, the state-of-the-art solution (developed by Smartmatic) Venezuela will be using to authenticate voters is radically different from the authentication procedures used in the US.