Touch-screen voting to make San Joaquin debut March 2

By JACK DOO
BEE STAFF WRITER

San Joaquin County's $5.7 million worth of new touch-screen voting machines will receive their first trial in the March 2 primary.

Registrar of Voters Deborah Hench said she has been busy readying 1,625 voting machines and more than 1,600 voting officials.

"Right now the challenge is getting all our precinct officials trained. We're working on that," Hench said. "We're asking them to come in for a four-hour training class."

The Diebold Election Systems voting machines have been tested, she said. Hench said she is waiting for the secretary of state to approve a software fix, which would tally crossover voting among political parties.

The Diebold system includes an optical scanner used for absentee ballots and mail-in ballots for precincts with fewer than 250 voters.

The new system was prompted by the high cost of the manual voting system and the troubled presidential election recount in Florida in 2000.

The 2002 passage of state Proposition 41 split $200 million among the 58 counties to upgrade voting systems.

Hench said San Joaquin County exceeds the security measures for computerized voting machines the state recently announced.

"There's a lot of things we do for security," she said. "Diebold didn't tell me to put passwords on; I did it."

The state will randomly test voting machines Election Day, prohibit the use of any wireless devices with electronic voting, and post the results of voting machines at each precinct for public viewing after the polls close.

Secretary of State Kevin Shelley said he will require that counties and machine manufacturers prepare a security plan for state officials to review. Counties using touch-screen machines will be required to keep copies of ballots cast.

On Thursday, Shelley ordered that paper ballots be offered in San Joaquin and three other counties to improve security and voter confidence. He issued the order after being informed that the Diebold system does not meet federal standards.

Under Shelley's directive, San Joaquin, San Diego, Solano and Kern counties also must print an image of each ballot cast on the touch-screen voting machines.

Hench said the San Joaquin voting machines are not online and the individual machines are password-protected and not networked.

"It's a felony to damage or do anything to a voting machine," she said. "We will arrest you."

The computer server the central control for the voting system is in a glassed-in, locked room, Hench said.

"They'd have to break into my server room, and I think I'd notice that," she said.

Hench, who became registrar of voters in May 2001, previously served as the interim registrar, chief of election technology and senior election clerk.

"I've been in the election business over 20 years," she said.

Hench said she and her staff are committed to staging the best election possible.

"We run an election as smooth as we can," she said. "We want the voters to be comfortable and confident."