Diebold Gets Stay in California 

By Kim Zetter 

02:00 AM Jan. 17, 2004 PT

SACRAMENTO, California -- Delay was the order of the day in California Thursday as the secretary of state's Voting Systems Panel, or VSP, postponed announcing any sanctions against Diebold Election Systems.

Voting activists from across California converged on the secretary of state's office to see what action, if any, the government would take against Diebold for violating voting-system certification laws and to see whether the state would certify the company's latest touch-screen voting machines.  

But the VSP tabled its decision for a second time, a move that frustrated activists who hoped the panel would decertify the Diebold machines currently used in California and bar the company from selling new machines in the state.

At least four counties recently purchased the new touch-screen model, the AccuVote-TSx, and are waiting for it to be certified for the March and November elections.

TSx certification was made conditional in November on the results of a statewide audit of Diebold machines. The audit was conducted after the state discovered that the company had placed uncertified software on some touch-screen machines used in elections.

The audit, completed last month, revealed that the company had installed uncertified software upgrades in all 17 counties using its touch-screen or optical-scan machines.

But the panel decided not to take action against Diebold until more information could be collected.

Yesterday the panel sent a letter to Diebold giving the company 30 days to turn over documentation for, among other things, the federal testing and qualification of each version of its software and hardware; procedures for tracking its inventory, especially when machines come back for repair; copies of all contracts signed with county election officials since January 2001; and, at the behest of voting activist Jim March, a description of all changes the company made to the Windows CE operating system in its touch-screen units.

The latter information will show whether the company violated Federal Election Commission voting-system standards, which require federal code review of software like Windows CE only if it's altered. Voting activists and computer experts believe that Diebold never submitted the Windows CE for review. Diebold was unavailable to confirm that before press time.

"We'll certainly work with the secretary of state's office to continue to provide them with the information they feel is necessary to conduct a complete and thorough audit," said Diebold spokesman David Bear.

The VSP meeting, which has previously attracted little more than a dozen voting-system vendors and activists, drew more than 100 people this time, including county election officials, computer experts and dozens of TV and newspaper journalists.

The larger audience is indicative of the growing nationwide concern about e-voting. More than 50 people offered comments for the record, some laced with strong emotions.

Some charged that expediency and greed were driving purchasing decisions, rather than the need to select machines that inspire voter confidence. Several speakers also suggested the state could develop its own secure e-voting system based on an open-source system recently developed in Australia.

Activist Jeremiah Akin called on the panel to decertify all of Diebold's voting systems.

"The extent of Diebold's crimes is clear," he said. "One or two instances of using uncertified software could be passed off as a mistake. But to have 100 percent of those machines running uncertified software clearly shows that the company believes that it has the right to violate the laws."

Joseph Holder, another activist, told the panel: "Citizens all across this country are awaking to this attack upon the very foundation of our form of government.... We are organizing and we will fight for our right to vote with confidence. If you do not listen to us here, then we will take our concerns to the streets and to the courts if necessary."

Marc Carrel, assistant secretary of state for policy and planning, told the audience, "I recognize that you're expecting us to take action ... but we don't want to take action hastily ... until we understand what the ramifications of that action are." 
 
 But Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, expressed concern that the state would be acting hastily if it certified TSx machines because of pressure from counties that want to use them in the March primary.

Kern, San Joaquin, Solano and San Diego counties recently purchased 14,000 TSx units at a cost of more than $40 million, even though state and federal authorities haven't certified them yet. State election law requires that counties purchase only certified machines.

The counties comprise 13 percent of the state's electorate.

"That is a huge percentage of California ballots to be put at risk during a presidential election year," Alexander said.

But San Joaquin County Registrar of Voters Deborah Hench said that if the state decertified Diebold's machines or prevented the county from using the TSx, voting results would take longer than an election night to calculate.

She also told the panel pointedly that their boss, Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, was elected by systems that the panel was now considering decertifying.

If the state does decertify Diebold, it must give the company six months' warning. Counties get an additional six months after that to replace the machines. The advance notice can be shortened, but not the period for decommissioning the machines.

Scott Konopasek, San Bernardino County registrar of voters, said the comments of activists and computing experts had surprised him.

"One might think that this was a third-world country struggling with the pains of implementing democratic reforms for the very first time," he said. "I disagree vehemently with the characterization of our electoral process as being broken."

Whether a decision about Diebold is made by March, the state plans to run random audits of all voting systems on election day, taking machines from polling places and running tests to confirm that they're recording accurately.

The state will also begin auditing systems of other vendors in the remaining 41 counties to see if uncertified software is installed on them as well.