New voting machines touch off official debate
From the JournalNews

By Jim Bebbington

DAYTON — Debate is growing over the security of the electronic voting systems that are poised to flood into polling places throughout the state and country.

On one side, political activists and some legislators are worried electronic voting booths could be tampered with, hacked or pre-set to steal elections. On the other are elections officials and some legislators who say technology and safety measures are in place to finally leave paper ballots to history.

The machines are all similar to ATMs. Voters would use touch screens or dials to indicate votes that would be recorded in computer memory and counted at the end of election day.

But all along there has been a chorus of criticism that such methods, because the votes are recorded only in digital form, can be altered.

Legislation has been introduced in Congress that would require electronic voting machines to also create a paper record of the votes cast. That way, supporters say, if there are any doubts about the electronic results, the paper ballots could be used to double check.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., who introduced the legislation last week with Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., also took a swipe at Walden O’Dell, Diebold’s chairman, when she said that executives at Diebold should stay out of partisan politics.

“We have a system that is vulnerable to attack, that provides no real accountability to ensure accuracy, and an e-voting manufacturer demonstrating partisanship,” she said.

O’Dell signed a fund-raising letter last summer to Ohio Republicans stating that he is committed to delivering Ohio’s electoral votes to President Bush this year. He has said he was speaking about his personal efforts and not those of his company.

U.S. Rep. Robert Ney, R-Bellaire, is among those in Congress pushing back against calls to include a paper record with the new computer systems.

The federal law that started the conversion, the 2002 Help America Vote Act, was passed after problems arose with punch-card ballots in Florida in the 2000 presidential vote.

“The proposals mandating a voter-verified paper record would essentially take the most advanced generations of election technologies and systems available and reduce them to little more than ballot printers,” Ney said.

State Sen. Tom Roberts, D-Trotwood, sides with those who are worried about the new systems. He is on a bipartisan committee of Ohio legislators that is taking testimony about the security of electronic voting systems.

“I think the committee is beginning to see where there are real voting problems in the machines,” Roberts said. “We as a group are concerned about Ohio moving forward this year without addressing them.”

Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell’s office has overseen Ohio’s attempt to convert voting systems. His office has paid for independent security reviews of the voting systems being offered to Ohio counties. His staff has said it is satisfied and Ohio counties should move ahead with picking any of the machines that have passed scrutiny. The state is under a Jan. 1, 2006, deadline to qualify for federal funds for the new machines.

But when Blackwell sought approval this month for the first installment of $128 million so counties could start buying machines, state lawmakers balked, opting to give the bipartisan committee some time to do its work.

Of 60 Ohio counties ing new voting machines, 42 picked Canton-based Diebold Election Systems; 11 chose Election Systems & Software of Omaha, and seven picked Hart InterCivic, the companies chosen by Blackwell’s office to serve Ohio.

A Seattle writer, Bev Harris, has created an Internet-based clearing house for problems and concerns about electronic voting systems. She said early reports from California that electronic systems performed adequately there on March 2 are overstated. Most counties using the systems had problems getting a portion of the machines started correctly or trouble getting help if problems occurred, she said.

Harris began blackboxvoting.org as the move toward electronic balloting gained steam after the 2000 election. She had written about embezzlement during a career as a freelance writer and saw similarities between the lax security embezzlers take advantage of and some of the blind faith being placed in the new voting machines.

“We have to get the procedures in place or there’s no question that elections will be stolen,” Harris said. “There is a small percentage of people who will succumb to temptation if the doors are left open and there is the opportunity.”

People concerned about the new voting systems cite several possible scenarios — results from the voting systems can be altered by someone gaining access to the databases housing the tallies, they allege, or machines could be programmed to slightly undercount certain votes, enough to favor a candidate but not enough to gain attention. And while the machines are designed to be relatively easy to use, there are worries the software could freeze or fail to turn on properly.

While Harris is concerned about the technology, others are attacking electronic voting more viscerally.

TrueVoting.Org, an organization funded by Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, has launched a drive to suspend the use of electronic voting systems for this fall’s presidential election.

“The corporations that make them are keeping secret how the machines work, saying, ‘Trust us, nothing can go wrong,”’ the group’s Web site states.