Call to end touch-screen voting worries county officials

By Les Mahler
San Joaquin News Service

County officials are upset that several state senators want to force San Joaquin County to decertify touch screen voting by November even though the primary went smoothly here.

State Sens. Don Perata, D-Oakland, and Ross Johnson, R-Irvine, are considering legislation that would force the state to go back to optical scan voting by November, said Susie Swatt, Johnson's chief of staff.
 
Perata did not return calls for comment.

The call for the return of paper ballots and the decertification of the touch-screen voting machines is based on problems with voting machines in several counties, including Alameda, San Diego and Orange counties, Swatt said.

In Orange County, more than 7,000 voters were given the wrong ballots, and in Alameda County votes for Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante were being given to a lesser-known candidate during the October recall, she said.

And in San Diego County, more than 1,000 voters were turned away from voting because the machines were blank, Swatt said.

The problems were too many for the senators to ignore, she said.

"They raised concerns about the voting machines," Swatt said. "They just want to decertify for November until we can have more confidence in the voting process."

But in San Joaquin County, there were no real problems, other than one polling place opening late. And that's because poll workers were late, said Deborah Hench, the county's registrar of voters.

San Diego's problems were traced to battery problems, not the touch-screen machines, she said.

And it was human error in Alameda County that caused the miscount in votes for Bustamante, said Elaine Ginnold, Alameda County's assistant registrar of voters.

During the primary, Alameda County voters found blank screens or the wrong ballots. But that was because of encoder cards mandated by the state's Secretary of State to allow crossover voting, Ginnold said.

Because there was so much information on the encoder cards, the touch-screen machines didn't work properly, she said.

Hench said Kern and Solano counties, which also used the Diebold Inc. systems, had no electronic hassles, and so she doesn't want to give up touch-screen voting.

After the problems surfaced March 3 there were 573 polling places in the state that reported problems Johnson and Perata asked Secretary of State Kevin Shelley to go back to paper ballots.

But in a press release, Shelley said he would review the situation and rely instead on a paper trail, a process he wants in place by 2006 for counties that use touch-screen voting.

Swatt said 2006 is too late and Johnson and Perata want a paper trail by 2005.

Sen. Charles Poochigian, R-Fresno, said the need to decertify the machines temporarily was a good call.

"There are some serious questions about whether they're working right," Poochigian said, adding that even if San Joaquin County had no problems for the primary, that doesn't vindicate the machines.

Hench said she will fight the change, partly because the problems with other counties were not related to the touch-screen machines.

"Our system is great," she said. "It does everything that was federally required."

Supervisor Victor Mow said changing back to paper ballots is unnecessary for San Joaquin County.

"This is ridiculous," he said. "We have a system that works well. It's those counties that need to make the corrections."

Because the county had no problems with voting, perhaps it should be held to a different standard, Mow said.

"They're making a mountain out of a mole hill," he said.

Swatt said if Shelley wants to make an exception for San Joaquin County, that would be his call.

"But that's a separate issue," she said.

Hench said there's also the issue of cost to revert to what was used earlier and whether any touch screen machine can create a paper trail.

"Right now there are no machines that have a verifiable paper trail patch," she said.

Swatt acknowledged that the changeover to previous voting technology will cost money, but said it's the cost of democracy.

For the county, a paper trail could cost hundreds of thousand of dollars in paper ballots alone, Hench said.

As for paper trails, machines in the county can do a paper trail, she said.

"We have a printer tape from every touch screen. We can print copies of the ballot."

The other problem with paper ballots is that there really is no back up, no record, Hench said.

With touch screen, there is the hard memory and portable memory.

"If you damage a paper ballot or lose it, you have no backup."