Iowans Protected From Touchscreen Failures
Voters were turned away from polls in Maryland during this summer’s primary election when touchscreen voting machines were inoperable. The same thing happened in California in 2004. The possibility that it will happen in November is so ominous that some slow-moving Congress critters introduced a bill just days before the recent adjournment to address the situation–like they thought there was time to make changes before November!!
The bill would have required every precinct to have emergency paper ballots so that no voter would be turned away by machine failure.
Welcome to Iowa.
We already have such a law, as recently pointed out by Doug Jones. Here it is, from the administrative code,
721–22.431(52)
Temporary use of printed ballots in voting machine precincts. The county commissioner of elections shall furnish a supply of printed ballots to each precinct where voting machines, including direct recording electronic machines, are to be used for any election.
22.431(1) Conditions under which paper ballots shall be used. In any precinct in which voting machines are designated as the only method of voting for any election, a paper ballot shall be furnished to any person offering to vote, in addition to those provisions set out in Iowa Code sections 49.81 and 49.90, if:
a. A power failure prevents use of the voting machines.
b. A malfunction occurs which prevents the use of one or more voting machines.
c. It is found that any voting machine has been prepared with all or part of a ballot strip meant for another precinct.
d. It is found that the ballot strips for any voting machine have been misprinted.
e. Any other condition exists due to a fault of the voting machine or machines which prevents the person or persons offering to vote at that precinct from casting their votes.
So the 18 Iowa counties that use only touchscreens still must have enough paper on hand to prevent the embarrassing messes we saw in the Maryland and California cases. Actually, it should be easy enough to use the leftover absentee ballots that every county had to prepare anyway.
My auditor is always repeating that Iowa has good election laws. Here’s a feather in her cap. But I wonder if she had paper ballot backups on hand for the September school board race when she used only the touchscreen machines and forsook her paper ballot scanners .