The computer voting machines do not have to do anything complicated at all. They must simply be able to register votes for the candidate or party or proposal chosen by a voter, tabulate them, count them up, and deliver arithmetically correct totals. People with no formal training, even children, used to perform this function all the time.

A necessary first step to effective investigation of the voting machine companies—only two companies control over 80 percent of vote counting in the U.S.—would be to compel an investigation by impartial and credentialed observers of the companies' source codes. However, Congress has not pushed very hard for an effective investigation of these companies, which are also substantial corporate campaign donors.

One exception is the questions raised by Representative John Conyers (D-MI), the ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee. Conyers has been making a heroic effort to focus congressional attention on election abuses.

In response to citizen protests, an official panel called the Baker-Carter Election Commission has been put together, co-chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker. Regrettably, the commission's first public hearings on vote fraud focused not on problems in vote counting, suppression of turnout, or on unequal dispersal of voting machines. It considered accusations of fraud by individual voters.

Conyers issued an angry formal statement: "The first meeting of the Baker-Carter election commission was disappointing and, at times, outrageous and tainted with racially charged innuendo," he said. "Let me make absolutely clear that I greatly admire former President Jimmy Carter and believe he was insightful and on-target throughout the hearing. However, given the incredible lack of balance and profound lack of good faith demonstrated by some of Carter's fellow commissioners and many of the witnesses at this hearing, at times he seemed to be a very lonely voice of sanity."

The remarks of James Baker, which were echoed by a number of right-wing political operatives called as witnesses, seemed to have the singular purpose of perpetuating hoaxes and conspiracy theories about ineligible Democratic voters being allowed to cast votes. The remedy was cleverly repeated like a broken record: "photo ID, photo ID, photo ID."

Right-wing pundit John Fund was called as an expert witness by the commission and offered racially charged proposals, with rhetoric in the same nasty spirit. The substance of the testimony alleging "voter fraud" was a fraud itself.

THE OHIO STORY—In Ohio, where many of the most obvious voting problems and abuses occurred and where the Conyers subcommittee held local hearings, a special prosecutor is investigating whether the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections broke the law in the way it handled a voter recount.

The Akron Beacon Journal reported in April that minor party presidential candidates David Cobb of the Green Party and Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party have written a letter to the Cuyahoga County prosecutor alleging that the board violated state law in the recount because it did not randomly select the precincts it recounted. Instead, the letter alleges, the county selected recount precincts only from among those with 550 voters or more, eliminating 90 percent of the county's precincts. The candidates' attorney said: "This is similar to randomly drawing a card out of a deck, but before doing so, eliminating all suits but hearts."

The candidates also allege in their letter that the chosen precincts were "of a special sort—those in which U.S. Senator John Kerry received either his largest or second largest number of votes in the ward. This meant that precincts in which Bush received an unusually high number of votes could not be examined, nor could the precincts in which the third-party candidates received unusually high vote totals."

Any objective investigation on transparency and accountability in vote counting is a step in the right direction. But progress has been uneven. Utah is one place where things are deteriorating.

In April, Utah's Voting Equipment Selection Committee adopted DRE electronic-ballot voting machines for use in the state. Public-interest research groups, including Utah Count Votes and US Count Votes, say that the DRE (or direct recording electronic) voting system is more risky and more costly than the AutoMARK optical-scan paper ballot, which has been endorsed by the National Federation of the Blind.

The Utah Election Office failed to inform voters of a substantially lower bid from the AutoMARK company and did not publish comparison analysis of the paper ballots and the more expensive DRE electronic ballot systems. Instead, according to the public-interest groups, rumors were spread that the AutoMARK ballots "cannot handle as many races and issues as the old punch card system did for Salt Lake County, and without allowing the vendor an opportunity to know about or refute these false rumors."

The groups point out that the largest available punch-card system allows for a maximum of 228 punch-holes, while the AutoMARK allows for more. The AutoMARK bid for Utah offered the state a two-sided ballot with 300 lines with a larger type-size and could be adjusted to handle even more. The sight-disabled use large-type printing, as well as braille, to print their ballots.