Legislators Urge E-Voting Halt 

By Kim Zetter 

09:48 AM Mar. 11, 2004 PT

SACRAMENTO California legislators said on Thursday they want to stop the use of all paperless electronic voting machines in the state, fearing the same type of fiasco that plagued Florida in the 2000 election.

State Sens. Don Perata (D-Oakland) and Ross Johnson (R-Irvine), the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate election committee, urged Secretary of State Kevin Shelley to decertify all paperless electronic voting machines before the general election, saying they fear the November presidential election in California could become "the Florida of 2004." 
 

The senators cited malfunctions in e-voting machines during last week's primary that resulted in voters being turned away from the polls. They said the presidential election was too important to leave to the new machines.

The move, if implemented, would force counties that use paperless touch-screen machines to use optical scan machines instead. Optical scan machines use a paper ballot that voters mark with a pencil or pen before they're scanned into an electronic machine.

All counties using paperless systems are required to have backup print options, such as optical scan machines. Most counties, however, possess only one or two optical scan units, which they generally use to process absentee ballots. Large counties would probably have to purchase or rent additional optical scan units for the November election.

Tom Martinez, spokesman for Perata, said the need for the moratorium became apparent after malfunctioning machines in the March primary prevented many people from voting.

In Orange County, poll workers using a new voting system gave approximately 7,000 voters the wrong ballots, which resulted in ballots being cast for the wrong legislative districts. In 21 precincts, more votes were cast than there were registered voters.

Martinez said that Perata's office had received positive feedback on the moratorium from a lot of elected officials, both Democrats and Republicans.

About 40 percent of California voters, in 14 counties, cast ballots on touch-screen machines in the March primary.

"People are entrusting that their votes are going to matter. You don't want to have malfunctions during a presidential election," Martinez said.

The touch-screen machines in Orange County, manufactured by Texas-based Hart InterCivic, require poll workers to give voters a four-digit access code to vote. The code is different for every legislative district and determines which ballot the machine gives the voter. As a result of incorrect ballots, voters ended up voting for candidates and races that were not in their district. The error affected five congressional races, four state senate races, and five assembly races.

"The basic rule of working with poll workers is that if they can screw things up they will," said Tom Stanionis, data processing manager for Yolo County's election division. "It's not their job to be able to do everything. It's your job to make it so they can't fail. The machine made it really easy to fail."

Stanionis said vendors have done everything to make voting "idiot proof" for voters, but in the process have put too much work and responsibility on poll workers.

"The machine should be designed so the poll worker doesn't have the option of giving people the wrong ballot. The machine should have been programmed to only give out valid ballots for that precinct," he said.

Yolo County does not use touch-screen machines, but Stanionis said they would like to as soon as a vendor comes up with one that works well.

"The existing generation of machines are no better than beta test machines," he said, adding that elections should not be a test-bed for vendors to work out problems with their machines.

"We only use these machines a few days a year. That means the timeframe to discover problems with them is a lot longer than an ordinary computer that you use every day," he said.

Stanionis noted that there were also problems with counting on election night in counties where touch-screen machines were used. One of the main selling points vendors give for touch-screen machines is faster results. But of 14 counties using touch-screen machines, seven were running late with results on election night.

"Running later because you have problems, even running as late as the counties using paper, is an indication that the machines are not giving you an advantage. Even the touch-screen counties that didn't have problems were not able to get results in any faster than the paper counties," he said.

Stanionis said he believed the legislators are right to outlaw the existing generation of touch-screen machines until vendors can produce better machines that also provide a paper trail, but he thinks the timing of this directive may place too much pressure on election officials.

Shelley mandated in December that all e-voting machines in California must produce a paper trail by July 2006.

Tony Miller, counsel to the secretary of state's office on voting issues, said the secretary of state is "looking at all of the options."

Laura Winslow, registrar of voters for Solano County, said the county had just purchased about 1,200 Diebold touch-screen machines. The county, which has 170,000 voters, owns two optical scan units but rented several others for the primary. Winslow said she didn't know what the county would do for November.

"I’d have to talk to my counsel," she said. "This is the first I've heard of a moratorium. I've not had a chance to read it or discuss it but will certainly be doing that over the next few days."