Despite controversy, criticism, electronic voting is a success
Monday, March 29, 2004

By JAY GOETTING
Register Staff Writer

The trials and tribulations of Napa County's elections office have overshadowed the apparent success of the county's first all-electronic balloting at the 122 polling places.

With help from state and federal funding and the new equipment from Sequoia Voting Systems, some 24,000 local voters touched screens instead of punching cards, and the accuracy of those devices seems unquestioned.

"The response by voters was overwhelmingly positive," said Napa County Registrar of Voters John Tuteur. "The poll workers liked (the touch screens) and they saved us a lot of money in printing costs."

Prior to the March 2 Primary Election, Secretary of State Kevin Shelley sent bulletins to a number of county voter registrars throughout California issuing directives for dealing with touch-screen security and, in come cases, placing demands on the local offices.

One group went so far as to warn voters against the electronic devices, urging voters to make sure to leave a paper trail. Most officials, including Tuteur, pooh-poohed that concept, saying the system is safe and secure.

Another vendor, Diebold, reportedly had some security issues, and there were warnings of hackers being able to enter the systems.

Tuteur said the fact that there was no Internet connection and machines were designed to stand alone made them secure.

Tuteur replied to Shelley that the Secretary of State does not have the authority to dictate local election protocol. As it turned out, a representative of the Secretary's office came to Napa and observed several polling places, as well as the election night counting activity.

Watching them work

Caren Daniels-Meade, chief of the political reform division in Shelley's office, was impressed by what she saw. She and Tuteur showed up at the Napa City-County Library shortly before the polls closed at 8 p.m. and watched the workers shut down two electronic voting machines.

One had been taken out of service earlier because of a glitch. "A couple of machines went sideways," Tuteur said of the devices after their first day of service.

Workers at the library precinct said the day had gone by with few problems. Daniels-Meade, a veteran of 32 years of working elections, said Shelley "felt like we should have people out there."

She watched as the workers turned off the machines, broke a seal in back and removed the cartridge which had the day's tallies. They were then sealed in a plastic envelope for their journey to the elections office prior to being counted.

Each cartridge full of votes took only eight seconds to tally.

Since the election, two state lawmakers have called for the decertification of electronic balloting before the presidential election. "It is apparent to us that touch-screen voting systems have proved themselves to be defective and otherwise unacceptable," wrote senators Don Perata and Ross Johnson.

Tim Smith, a Sonoma County supervisor and former president of the County Supervisors Association of California, said in Napa this week that decertification was highly unlikely, and Tuteur warned they should not throw out the baby with the bath water. "There are 14 counties using touch-screen," he said. "Eleven went smoothly, and all the Sequoia counties worked just fine."

Quick counts

One precinct worker at each location was charged with bringing the ballots to downtown Napa. At one point, the precinct workers' cars were queued up around the block on Second Street and Coombs.

Besides the polling places, there are 16 mail precincts in Napa County. In addition, there were thousands of absentee ballots submitted prior to election day or brought in to the polling places.

With results from around the state posted on the Internet shortly after the 8 p.m. closing, Napa County lagged behind. Absentees were released shortly before 9 p.m. with Tuteur saying he would rather be accurate than fast.

At 9:50 p.m., all the votes were physically in the building and about half were counted.

At 10:45 p.m., the unofficial final tally was released.

Even though the night was over and several races were too close to name a winner, Tuteur was outlining the procedure for the days following the election. There were more paper ballots, absentees and mail-ins, yet to arrive or be counted.

Another run of all the paper ballots was yet to come. The discovery of an error in getting the right ballots to the proper voters, along with the discovery of two ballots that still needed final processing, prolonged the agony even further.

Tuteur and his staff examined by hand ballots that the vote counting machine deemed flawed, making duplicates where warranted and running the ballots through once again.

Write-in votes are also examined. Such political luminaries as Mickey Mouse and Dizzy Gillespie often receive write-ins. This time, "Dog" received several votes, and exercising perhaps the ultimate protest, three totally blank ballots were submitted.

Despite all the problems, Tuteur retains confidence in Sequoia, and company officials feels the integrity of the election has not been compromised. Sequoia President Tracey Graham wrote a letter to Tuteur assuring him that the machines performed reliably.

The elections office is making sure some voters in remote area on the borders of supervisorial districts are receiving the proper ballots.

Just as there were some problems with ballots for districts 4 and 5, there was a discrepancy two years ago in a college board race.

In addition, there were four homes in the Berryessa Estates subdivision at the north end of the lake that have been voting in the wrong district for years. That revelation only recently came to light when a new home was added to the rolls.

With mail-in voting already underway in a St. Helena school board race, officials hope to isolate and correct any further problems. The deadline for voting in that election is April 13.

The Sequoia machines have been inspected, packed up and stored in a south county warehouse until they are needed again in November.