Electronic Voting Questions Surface 
Reported By:  The Associated Press
ATLANTA (AP) To Georgia election officials, overhauling the state's voting system and going totally electronic looked like a no-brainer after the 2000 election debacle where the identity of the next president hung by a few Florida chads.

The $54 million conversion seemed a hit with voters when it was rolled out for the state elections in 2002. Secretary of State Cathy Cox pronounced the results more accurate than ever before.

But as the state prepares to use the touch-screen voting system again for the March 2 presidential primary, new fears are being raised by some that the system isn't as fail-safe as originally believed and could be manipulated to steal an election.

Across the country, in fact, computer scientists and political activists are spreading the word through the Internet and other means that any electronic voting system is not fraud proof.

That's caused some alarms to go off in the state Legislature, where a bill already has been introduced requiring the machines to be modified to kick out paper records that could be scrutinized in case of a recount or close election.

Bobby Kahn, whose former boss then-Gov. Roy Barnes gave the go-ahead for the conversion, says he still trusts the system even though Barnes was turned out of office in the very first election in which the touch screen machines were used.

"I would love to believe that Roy Barnes and (then-U.S. Sen.) Max Cleland really won on Election Day but lost because of some voting conspiracy. That just didn't happen," said Kahn, now the interim chairman of the state Democratic Party and a member of the State Election Board.

He said fears about electronic voting are being fanned "by a combination of computer people that don't know anything about politics and political people who don't know anything about computers."

In Georgia, at least, it seems Democrats are fairly comfortable with the new system while Republicans are the most concerned.

Kahn's political counterpart, Georgia Republican Chairman Alec Poitevint, said: "After spending $54 million of the people's money on these machines, we certainly hope Ms. Cox can stand behind the accuracy of the voting system."

And Perdue's office said: "Governor Perdue is not a software engineer. The Secretary of State was elected to protect the integrity of Georgia's voting process. We hope that she has made the right choices."

Cox, who is a Democrat, is widely viewed as a potential challenger to Perdue in 2006. Like Kahn, she insists the new voting system is sound.

"I have been and remain completely confident in the accuracy and security of the system. It is not because I believe the machines are perfect but because of the protocol we have put into Georgia law about how these machines must be tested, and all the checks and balances we have in the system," she said.

The most critical report so far about Georgia's system came in a study last year by researchers at Johns Hopkins University who concluded the Diebold Election Systems machines used in Georgia are vulnerable to tampering by unscrupulous voters, poll workers, software developers and "even janitors."

Among other things, the study said the ATM-like card given to each voter to place in the touch-screen machine is vulnerable to counterfeiting and could be used to cast multiple ballots.

The lead researcher on the study, Avi Rubin, later acknowledged that he failed to disclose that he had financial ties to a Diebold competitor.

Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Cox, said redundant safeguards have been built into the system to protect against fraud and that paper audit trails, created when voters enter the precinct and sign a voter's certificate, will reveal at a glance if an improper number of votes have been cast.

But many aren't satisfied with that explanation, including state Sen. Tom Price, R-Roswell, who has introduced a bill requiring the state to create a paper record of each ballot cast.

"There are people and I'm one of them concerned about the ability to validate election with confidence," he said. "What the citizens want is to make certain elections are fair and that, if there's a question, there's a check and balance."

Price said he wasn't questioning the result of the 2002 election, which turned out extraordinarily well for Republicans.

But as people become more familiar with the equipment, he said, "the possibility for fraud increases."

Riggall said it's possible to convert the system to do what Price wants, but that Cox doesn't believe the cost is worth it.

"After a century or more of using paper in Georgia for elections that have been, in some cases, fraudulent or inaccurate, we think the idea that paper is the gold standard is a false
premise," he said.

The uniform touch-screen system replaced one in which each of Georgia's 159 counties could choose which type voting equipment to use. That resulted in a crazy quilt mix of optical scanners, punch-cards, lever-activated machines and paper ballots.

 

(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)