Lawmakers press against touchscreens

By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER

Two California lawmakers' call Thursday for a halt to touchscreen voting the nation's first such step back from e-voting probably comes too late.

With more than 40 percent of California voters casting ballots on touchscreen machines, electronic voting already may be too deeply rooted in the state's elections for a wholesale switch to other voting systems by November.

Local elections officials and consultants said they doubted that the voting industry could supply thousands of new optical-scanning machines for California precincts now equipped with touchscreens.

"You don't have a lot of time. To try to decertify and get something new is putting a lot of strain on the election process," said Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services, a Washington, D.C.-based consultant on voting systems.

 

"I'm not sure there are vendors that can produce that amount of equipment that quickly," said Alameda County Registrar of Voters Brad Clark. "You're also talking about printing millions of paper ballots."

Two state Senate election leaders say the 2004 presidential election is nonetheless too important to rely on potentially faulty touchscreen voting.

Senate Majority Leader Don Perata, D-Oakland, and Sen. Ross Johnson, R-Irvine, urged Secretary of State Kevin Shelley to decertify the machines and disallow their use in November.

If Shelley declines their request, the senators the chairman and vice chairman of the Elections and Reapportionment Committee say they will fast-track legislation denying use of the machines in California.

Shelley did not respond directly on Thursday. He "shares the same concerns the senators have raised," said Shelley spokesman Doug Stone in a prepared statement. "That is why the secretary in February issued directives for added security in counties utilizing touchscreen machines."

But on Super Tuesday those directives failed to prevent thousands of voters in three of the state's largest counties from being given the wrong ballot or being turned away by faulty, poorly tested voting equipment.

In Orange County, an analysis by the Los Angeles Times suggests that pollworkers programmed the wrong ballot for 7,000 voters. In San Diego County, more than 500 precincts about 40 percent opened late as pollworkers struggled to boot up voter-card encoders supplied by Diebold Election Systems. The same problem delayed the opening of 200 precincts in Alameda County. Hundreds of voters in both counties were turned away.

"We are in the process of examining this information and are working with the counties to gain a full understanding of what went wrong and what went right on election day," Stone said.

Perata called the March 2 primary "a test flight of widespread use of these machines.

"I think it's fair to say the test flight crashed and burned," he said. "None of us want California to be the sequel to Florida."

E-voting critics flanked Perata and Johnson.

"I want the touchscreen machines to be put away until they're safe enough to use, and we're not there yet," said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, a Davis-based nonprofit that studies voting technology.

The e-voting snafus of March 2 highlighted weaknesses in touchscreen testing and certification, she said, as well as high-tech training demands on pollworkers who are running elections in garages, schools and churches. While most of the 14 counties using touchscreen machines had few problems, the widespread failures in Alameda and San Diego counties confronted pollworkers with computer breakdowns they'd never seen in training. In San Diego County, they had trouble calling for help and getting it.

But elections officials, academics and voting-system makers said decertifying all touchscreen machines in California would be a mistake, especially when the technical problems on March 2 were limited to Diebold Election Systems, the nation's second-largest supplier of voting systems, and a small vendor, Hart InterCivic.

"My sense is it almost seems counterproductive to decertify everyone's product because of issues that seem primarily related to one vendor," said Becky Vollmer, spokeswoman for ES&S, maker of the iVotronic machine used in Merced County. "We'll continue to watch this discussion among policy makers, but we at ES&S are absolutely certain that our technology is secure, accurate and reliable."

Oakland-based Sequoia Voting Systems' president had warned San Diego County about buying an uncertified Diebold touchscreen system last year and offered to substitute its own. Now the company worries it will be tarred by problems with Diebold equipment.

"I just hope for our sake that people distinguish between companies that have had problems and companies that have not," said Alfie Charles, a Sequoia spokesman and former California assistant secretary of state. "We've had incredibly successful elections across the country with products that are certified on time, delivered ahead of schedule and that function well on election day."

Berkeley mathematician Henry Brady, an expert on voting systems, said all voting systems have problems and it's too early to discard electronic voting.

"If we go to paper ballots tomorrow, believe me, we will have problems with paper ballots. We've got to have a little patience and understanding," Brady said. "We also have to be tough with these firms and say they just have to do a better job. We should be pretty upset with them, frankly. This is not good."