Release date: Sept. 16, 2004
Contact: Elaine Justice, Associate Director, University Media Relations,
at 404-727-0643 or elaine.justice@emory.edu

Potential Conflicts Exist Between e-Voting, Law

In this year's horse race of a presidential election, voting and election administration errors could swing the outcome, and in the case of electronic voting, the lack of a paper trail may leave existing election recount laws out of sync with the reality of the new technology, says Emory University election law expert Michael Kang.

"In states like Georgia that have adopted electronic voting, there typically is no paper trail. So, without physical ballots, you can't have a recount as the laws intend. There's no way of recounting votes when the only record is the count total," Kang says. "You might update the law to reflect the new technology, but an easier way would be simply to keep a physical record of every vote."

The Florida recount debacle highlighted some of the challenges faced by election administrators, and this year is likely to be just as messy, he says. In the wake of the 2000 election, there were many calls to clean up election procedures. Federal legislation passed in 2002 provided some money to institute reforms and clarified some of the rules, but the resulting changes have been fairly minimal, he says.

"Any given election will have a certain degree of counting errors. In a very close election, the margin of error is so small that even a reasonable amount of error can flip the final result and make the difference in who wins. This puts a lot of pressure on election officials to get it right," Kang says.

Kang is an assistant professor of election law at the Emory University School of Law. Reach him a 404-712-4243 or mkang@law.emory.edu.

For more political news, visit the election news Web site.

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