Electronic voting component wasn't fully tested

By Helen Gao
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

March 13, 2004

State election officials knew in the days leading up to the March 2 election that a key component of San Diego County's electronic voting system had not undergone the full testing set forth by federal standards, according to internal government correspondence.  
That component, a laptop-like device used to activate voter cards to call up ballots on touch screens, failed on Election Day because of a battery problem.

The glitch caused 36 percent of the precincts, or 573 of 1,611, to open late. An undetermined number of voters were affected.

County officials were informed that the device only had conditional certification for one-time use on March 2, election day, because of outstanding testing issues, according to a Feb. 20 letter the county provided yesterday.

The letter from the state to Diebold Election Systems, the manufacturer of the device, said that after the election, the equipment needs to be resubmitted for certification.

The state gave conditional certification to the device after its own technical consultant recommended approval in a Feb. 23 letter, after what he said was a "limited" review of "limited" testing by an independent laboratory.

Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Dianne Jacob said the county relied on the state certification and did not know about the state consultant's letter.

"If we were in the secretary of state's position and had that information, I am not sure if this county would have made the same decision" to certify the device for use, she said.

"The secretary of state did the certification. Based on that, we are forced to trust his judgment."

The state did not do more testing because of the "urgent March deadline," said consultant Steven V. Freeman in his letter to the state's director of voting systems.

The testing focused only on whether the device could encode voter cards properly according to precinct and political party.

Freeman did not raise concerns about the battery in his letter, but he did point out that the device had not been fully tested according to the Federal Election Commission's Federal Voting Systems Standards.

The standards, which California adopted, contain technical specifications to ensure electronic voting systems are "accurate, reliable and secure."

Full testing would have required checking the performance of the equipment under normal and abnormal conditions. In addition, it would have required a series of evaluations of the software and hardware to ensure the equipment holds up during storage, operation and transportation.

Doug Stone, spokesman for Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, blamed Diebold for submitting the equipment late for testing. He said it wasn't until January that Diebold made the equipment available.

"From our standpoint, Diebold dragged its feet in this process and frankly, it was quite frustrating," Stone said.

He said the state certified the device because testing by independent laboratory CIBER Inc. showed that the equipment functioned.

Diebold's spokesman, David Bear, defended the device. "It did meet CIBER testing and met approval from the Secretary of State's Office," he said.

When sought later for comments on Diebold's delay in submitting the device, Bear did not return calls.

Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, which has repeatedly raised concerns about the security of electronic voting, said state and federal officials need to do a better job of oversight.

"This incident . . . shows how the regulatory oversight of voting systems is a house of cards and it's easily toppled," Alexander said.

The state, jittery about electronic voting in general, on Feb. 11 ordered San Diego and other counties to provide paper ballots as an option March 2.

By then, county officials said it was too late to print the different types of ballots needed and distribute them to all the precincts. The county had about 33,000 ballot types, including language translations.

In the end, the county provided paper ballots only at the registrar's office in Kearny Mesa.

The March 2 election, being a modified open primary, was complicated. Up until October, different parties could decide whether they would allow nonpartisans to cross over and vote in their races.

"It was not entirely Diebold's fault that (the device) came so late. Before any testing could be done, Diebold had to know what those party rules were" to program the equipment, said Elaine Ginnold, Alameda County's assistant registrar.

Alameda, which uses Diebold, also had equipment problems but nearly all its polls opened on time because they had provisional paper ballots. San Diego County opted for electronic provisionals.

Ginnold said state lawmakers share some responsibility for setting rules that make elections increasingly complicated.

"There is just not enough time to program something and do all the testing that is required," she said.