Capital goes low-tech on voting
It will be a pencil-and-paper primary in March
By Cameron Jahn Bee Staff Writer

Sacramento County is taking the slow road to voting reform, using a paper-and-pencil system for the March 2 primary to replace the discredited punch-card machines that were at the center of the voting fiasco in the 2000 presidential election in Florida.

County elections officials are in no hurry, given the questions, hurdles and controversy surrounding the ultimate goal of having electronic touch-screen voting machines in all precincts statewide by 2005.

 "I'm comfortable voting on a touch-screen machine and that my vote will be counted accurately, but there are questions out there from people who don't feel comfortable with it," said Jill Lavine, the county's registrar of voters. "The money (we're planning to spend) is huge, but more importantly, I don't want to lose my voters' confidence because once you lose that, it takes years to get it back."

Instead of buying touch-screen voting machines for at least $11 million, Sacramento County spent about $80,000 to convert its old punch-card machines into optical-scan machines, which use ballots similar to standardized test forms with boxes to fill in next to numbered choices.

All Sacramento County voters in the March 2 primary election and most voters in the November presidential election will cast ballots on the optical-scan system.

Elections officials nationwide have 18 months to install at least one touch-screen voting machine per polling place in order to comply with federal regulations and receive part of the $2.3 billion in federal money earmarked for the change-over.

According to a report released last week by the Washington-based Election Reform Information Project, many election reforms required to be in place before the 2004 election will not happen until 2006 because of federal money that has been slow to arrive and security concerns surrounding touch-screen voting machines.

Election watchdogs in California, however, say the state is moving too quickly toward the electronic frontier of voting without ensuring that touch-screen machines are equipped with enough security measures to prevent vote tampering.

All California voters must be guaranteed the option of independently verifying their votes by 2006 via a paper receipt before their votes are counted. But voters in at least 12 counties will mark their choices in March on machines that do not produce a hard copy. Touch-screen machines are required, however, to print out a paper record of the ballots cast when the polls close.

The absence of a paper trail verified by each voter could open the door to election rigging if records are stored only on computer hard drives, said Kim Alexander, president of the Davis-based California Voter Foundation.

The democratic process could be compromised if counties fail to install the proper system the first time around, she said.

"We're not talking about minor changes, but 14,000 machines put into place this March and an investment of over $45,000,000," she said. "It's likely those voters will be using those machines for a long time."

Disability advocates say they still are not happy with the paper trail concept because it bars the blind from verifying their votes without help from another person, which is required by the 2001 federal election reform law.

"All this is going to serve to delay our ability to vote independently for the first time ever," said Dan Kysor, a legislative advocate for the California Council of the Blind.

At least a dozen counties already have touch-screen voting systems, although those machines may be retrofitted later to print a voter-verified paper trail.

San Joaquin County recently spent $5.7 million on 1,625 Diebold TSx touch-screen voting machines to use in the March primary. Despite recent concerns about the security of the Ohio-based company's software, it's too late to change vendors now, said Deborah Hench, San Joaquin County's registrar of voters. "At this point, this election has to be run on this system," she said. "That's the system we have."

Dozens of protesters demonstrated this week in Solano and San Diego counties when touch-screen machines that do not produce a paper trail were introduced. They called for county supervisors to require voter-verified paper trails immediately.

Elections officials in Mendocino County will not use their 73 new Diebold touch-screen machines until the vendor can outfit them with a voter-verified paper trail.

"How they will do it, no one knows," said Anne Holden, assistant registrar of voters.

Sacramento County already has a bit of experience with touch-screen voting and paper trails. Before the November 2002 statewide election, 1,600 Sacramento County voters became the first in the country to cast ballots on a touch-screen machine that produced a paper trail. New Jersey-based Avante International Technology displayed its touch-screen machines at city halls and state buildings countywide.

Sacramento County elections officials will wait until after the March primary to put out a bid for as many as 5,000 touch-screen voting machines. Voters may be allowed to vote on the new machines two weeks before the November election.

The county plans to spend as much as $20 million on machines that produce a paper trail that voters can verify, even though the state has not released criteria to choose such machines.

"(The contract) will probably be pretty vague, like will you be able to meet the state's standards, whatever they may be," Lavine said. "They'll have to raise their right hand and swear."