E-Vote Snafu in California County 

by Kim Zetter for WiredNews

After recounting more than 13,000 absentee paper ballots, Northern California's Napa County reported Thursday that an electronic voting machine used in the March 2 primary election missed more than 6,000 votes.

The recount did not change the outcome of any races, but a spokesman for a state legislator said the glitch highlighted the need for using only e-voting machines that produce a paper trail.
Last week Napa County officials discovered that its optical scan machine manufactured by Sequoia Voting Systems failed to record some votes marked on paper absentee ballots. A Sequoia employee who had set up the machine before the election failed to calibrate it to read different types of ink, specifically dye-based inks that are typically used in gel pens. As a result, the machine did not record some votes.

After recalibrating the machine, the county began rescanning 13,000 ballots this week, but encountered a second problem when the machine jammed Wednesday.

Napa Registrar of Voters John Tuteur said the second problem occurred with a device that feeds the ballots through the machine. The county ordered a new machine from Sequoia and finished the recount Thursday.

Tuteur said the machine ped 6,692 votes out of a total of 468,001 votes cast on the more than 13,000 absentee ballots. He added that there was no pattern to the ped votes: They spanned federal, state and county races and affected various candidates and ballot measures.

"But no votes were lost," he said. "Some votes were skipped and were found after the fact."

The need for a recount raised the possibility that at least one close local race would be overturned. Incumbent county Supervisor Mike Rippey narrowly lost his re-election bid by only 50 votes. But Tuteur said the recount showed Rippey lost by 107 votes. He added that no federal, state or county races were overturned by the recount.

The county discovered the original problem while conducting a manual recount of 1 percent of its precincts, which all counties are required to do under state election law.

A hand count of 60 paper ballots from one precinct produced more votes than the number of votes the machine recorded for that precinct. After re-scanning some of the ballots, officials discovered that the machine wasn't recording some votes.

The glitch is the latest in a string of problems with new e-voting machines being rolled out nationwide.

Critics say the machines can't be trusted because they are inaccurate or susceptible to tampering. Most of the complaints are about paperless touch-screen machines, which do not produce a paper backup so that votes can be counted by hand in case of anomalies.

Earlier this month, California legislators called on the secretary of state to decertify touch-screen machines before the presidential election in November.

The decertification would force counties that use paperless touch-screen machines to switch to optical scan machines, which use a paper ballot that voters mark with a pencil or pen before it is scanned into an electronic machine.

The incident in Napa County highlights the fact that optical scan machines are no less susceptible to malfunction. But Tom Martinez, a spokesman for state Sen. Don Perata, who called for the decertification of touch-screen machines, said the glitch supports the need for machines that produce a paper trail.

"This is a perfect example of what can happen if we rely solely on machines with no paper trail we lose the confidence of the election," said Martinez. "While there are errors made in tabulation, the beauty of the modern paper-based ballots is they have a built-in process for verification."

Darren Chesin, a consultant to the state Senate elections and reapportionment committee, said Perata (D-Oakland) and Sen. Ross Johnson (R-Irvine), the chairman and vice chairman of the state Senate election committee, are still waiting to hear from Secretary of State Kevin Shelley about whether he will decertify touch-screen machines as they requested. If Shelley decides not to decertify the machines, Chesin said the legislators will act to decertify them anyway.

"We are preparing legislation just in case," he said. "We're hoping we don't have to use it. But if I were a county that was using (paperless touch-screen machines) now, I would at least be making preliminary preparations to use something else."