Paper Ballots, Voting Machines or a Combination?

By Woody Jenkins, Editor, Central City News — A battle has been raging in recent weeks within the Republican Party over whether our election system in Louisiana is honest and reliable and about what sort of voting system we should have — paper ballots, voting machines, or a combination of the two. Volumes can be written on these topics, but because space is limited, i’ll be concise.

Based on my experience, I will answer some of the principal questions people have about our current system.  My experience is having been a candidate for the United States Senate in 1996 in which the election was stolen.  We spent a year investigating what happened and found more than 35,000 stolen votes.  As a member of the legislature, I authored many of our current election safeguards, such as the requirement that voters show a government-issued photo ID in order to vote.  I worked on behalf of the White House to investigate voter fraud during the  2020 Presidential election in Michigan.  I gained valuable international experience as President Reagan’s representative to observe the Presidential election in Honduras in 1985, the first free election in that nation’s history.  I have been a student of election fraud in Louisiana throughout our history, including the stolen election in the 2nd Congressional District in 1976 when Congressman Rick Tonry “rang the bell” repeatedly on his own behalf.  He later went to federal prison.  Also the very questionable election in the 4th Congressional District in 1978 in which  former Rep. Buddy Leach was indicted but acquitted on vote-buying charges.

I make two observations: 

• First, all of our elections in Louisiana are conducted by local elected officials, whether the election is for a local, state, or federal office.  Voter registration is handled by the parish Registrar of Voters.  The voting machines, the selection of commissioners, and the collection of election returns are under the jurisdiction of the Clerk of Court.

The election itself is under the jurisdiction of a five-member body called the Parish Board of Election Supervisors. Each parish has its own such board.  The board consists of the Registrar of Voters, the Clerk of Court, an appointee of the Governor, an appointee of the chairman of the parish Republican Party, and an appointee of the parish Democratic Party.  Cases of election fraud should be reported to the Secretary of State’s Election Fraud Division. Cases of election fraud are prosecuted by the local District Attorney.

• Second, Louisiana has a long history of election fraud and 100 percent of it has involved election officials, commissioners, or voters.  We have never to my knowledge in the history of the state had a proven case of election fraud that involved the hacking of voting machines.  That is not to say it could not happen.  However, I have seen no evidence that it has in fact happened.

Having said all of that, here are my answers to a few questions:

Q. Are our elections honest in Louisiana?   A. There is some fraud in almost every election, but you are unlikely to ever see it at your precinct.  The fraud could involve one person requesting a ballot for someone he knows is dead or no longer living at the address and then voting in the name of that person.  Or it could be massive,  as it was in the 1996 Senate race, where more than $20 millions poured into New Orleans from the gambling industry to buy the election.  Election fraud is most likely to occur in very important, high profile elections that are expected to be close and where there is a large among of money on the street.  This could involve the Presidential election, the Governor’s race, a Senate race, or a gambling proposition.  It is most likely to occur in the inner city of New Orleans where corrupt political organizations control the election apparatus.  Any amount of fraud is against the law, undermines the will of the people, and should be prosecuted to the fullest.

Q. What kind of vote fraud have we experienced in Louisiana?  A. The most common types of vote fraud are:

1. Voters who receive cash or other things of value in exchange for their vote.

2. Commissioners who allow voters to enter the voting machine and cast ballots multiple times even though the person is not registered to vote in the precinct. This is called ‘ringing the bell.’ This requires corrupt commissioners who are often members of a corrupt political organization.  In the 1996 Senate race, more than 250 vehicles were on the streets of New Orleans each bringing five to 10 individuals from precinct to precinct where they voted over and over again.  This generated tens of thousands of illegal votes.  Ringing the bell creates paperwork problems because the required signatures are not in the precinct register.  That’s why after the 1996 Senate race the voting machines and precinct registers in Orleans Parish we’re never sealed.  The Orleans Clerk of Court needed unfettered access to the precinct registers for several days to doctor the paperwork.

3. Gathering mail-in ballots that belong to others and voting on their behalf.  This has become very common in other states that allow mail-in ballots and drop boxes.  There is no chain of custody for these paper ballots.  There is no way to know who filled out the ballot or how many ballots a person sent in.

4. Vote Adjudication.  Paper ballots are scanned by scanning machines which often kick out 30 percent of the ballots as unreadable.  An individual then reads or “adjudicates” that ballot, deciding which candidate it will go for.  This is a huge problem in other states that rely exclusively on millions of paper ballots.  Often the person adjudicating the ballots represents one political party and makes a corrupt decision.

There are many other types of election fraud.

Q. Are our voting machines connected to the internet and can they be hacked?  A. Well, it should be obvious by now that any computer can be hacked.  However, the voting machines used in East Baton Rouge Parish were manufactured in the early 1990’s and do not connect to the Internet.  If they were hacked, they would have to be hacked at each separate voting precinct.  We have heard no reports of that happening.  The vote totals for each voting machine are recorded at the precinct and then posted at the precinct.  The system we currently use involves a cartridge in the voting machine that records the votes from that precinct. The cartridge is then removed from the voting machine and carried by a commissioner to the Clerk of Court’s office election night.  The numbers are then checked from each cartridge at the Clerk of Court’s office.  Those numbers are then transmitted to the Secretary of State.  The number at the Secretary of State has to conform to the total of all the cartridges at the Clerk’s office.

Q. Are paper ballots the most secure way of voting? A. I would have to give that a resounding NO.  Paper ballots are the easiest thing to manipulate.  First, they can simply be thrown away.  Second, other ballots can be substituted in their place.  Third, there is a serious problem with how and by whom the ballots would be counted if we relied solely on paper ballots for Election Day voting.

At present, paper ballots are used only for mail in ballots.  The mail ballots are counted by the Board of Election Supervisors. The process for doing that will reveal how that cannot be done at the local precinct.  In the Presidential election in East Baton Rouge Parish, 108,000 votes were cast in person on election day.  99,000 votes were cast early or by mail.  There ended up being about 16,000 mail ballots, which had to scanned and then hand counted.  The Board of Election Supervisors arrived by 9 a.m. and began the process. They had about 20 paid workers helping them.  The location had to be secured with armed guards.  Everyone had to give up their cell phones and other devices before going in. Each member of the Board of Supervisors was sequestered. They could not leave or speak to anyone.  In the course of the day, 3,000 paper ballots were challenged.  There were several bases for challenging them.  The first was failure of the voter to sign the ballot.  The second grounds for challenge was failure of a witness to sign verifying the voter’s signature.  The third grounds for challenge was failure to include the correct mother’s maiden name.  The fourth grounds for challenge was failure of the voter to seal his ballot in the interior envelope in order to preserve the secrecy of the ballot.  Of the 3,000 challenges, 2,700 were upheld.  300 of the challenged ballots were counted, namely those that failed to enclose their ballot in the inner envelope.  

If paper ballots were used on election day in Louisiana, the number of paper ballots to be counted would be massive.  You can see that all of the same safeguards currently imposed for the counting of mail ballots would have to be followed at each individual precinct in the parish.

So imagine the situation… On election day in East Baton Rouge Parish, the Clerk of Court employees 2,700 commissioners.  Recruiting those commissioners is a massive job.  They have to work from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. for regular elections and from 5:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. for federal elections.  Many commissioners are elderly.  By the time the polls close at 8 p.m., the commissioners have been there from 13 to 15 hours.  When they closed the polls, they would then have to count 500 to 1,000 ballots at their precinct!  Seriously?  There’s no way!  But let’s suppose they did.  The precinct would have to be sequestered.  The commissioners would have to have help.  Volunteers?  No way! You can’t depend on volunteers to show up.  You have to know your help will be there, and they have to be trained and be official agents of the state.  There would also have to be armed guards present to protect the sanctity of the ballots.  No one could call in or out.  And commissioners would have to be sequestered until the counting is done and certified.

Amazingly, many of those advocating the exclusive use of paper ballots and counting the ballots at the precinct also are demanding that the count be finished by 10 p.m.  That’s not going to happen.

But here’s what would happen — exactly what I investigated in Michigan.  Because you can’t meet all the security standards at the local precinct, the ballots will be transported to a counting center.  At the counting center, ballots arrive from many different locations — local precincts, mailed in ballots, early voting ballots, and drop box ballots. All are counted and mixed together. People at the counting center don’t know where the votes are coming from. There is no way to have precinct returns or assign results to specific precincts. Ballots can be thrown away.  New fake ballots can be brought in.  It is truly a chaotic nightmare!

Fortunately, there is a good alternative. 

Some of the new voting machines being offered to the State allow the voter to vote on the voting machine and then print out a copy of his vote.  That print out is confirmed by the voter, who deposits it in a ballot box outside the machine.  The machine totals are then used to report the results on election night, and the paper ballots in the ballot boxes are preserved in case of an election challenge.

This allows elections results to be announced promptly but creates a paper back up that can give us a way to separately verify the machine totals.  That’s the best of both worlds!

So what is best — paper ballots, voting machines, or a combination of the two?  I believe a combination of the two would work best!  Voting machines with backup paper ballots.