Secretary of state finally sees the e-voting light

By Dan Gillmor

Mercury News Technology Columnist

When a posse of computer scientists first raised dire warnings about untrustworthy new voting machines in late 2002 and early 2003, California's top voting official thought they were ``a bunch of nut jobs.''

But Secretary of State Kevin Shelley came to understand the risks. And he's working to head them off.

A flurry of news in recent days convinces me that, at least in California, voters can have some measure of trust in the ballots they'll be using in November and beyond. We're not in the clear yet, partly due to astoundingly obtuse actions by some local officials, but the progress is now visible and heartening.

``We're trying to restore voter confidence,'' Shelley said.

Among other noteworthy developments, Shelley's office Tuesday issued tough standards for providing a voter-verifiable paper auditing method for ``direct recording electronic,'' or DRE, voting systems. Those are the touch-screen machines that many jurisdictions, including Santa Clara County in the heart of Silicon Valley, have purchased or ordered.

The standards, which take full effect July 1, 2006, require what many county officials and voting-machine companies had insisted was unnecessary or even inappropriate. They require, among other things, a printout giving voters a way to verify that the machine has recorded their ballots as cast. Those paper records become the official ballots in case of a recount.

On Monday, Shelley's office announced a deal with Santa Clara County and several other California counties to boost confidence in this year's elections. DRE machines won't have to have paper trails this year, but the counties agreed to offer paper ballots to voters who request them. (I plan to.)

No more secrets

Moreover, the programming code at the heart of the machines must be supplied to the state for testing. Previously, the voting-machine companies and the supposedly independent testing labs they were funding were the only parties to see the code, an obvious conflict of interest.

``It's just wrong,'' Shelley said of the vendor-funded ``independent testing'' system.

In a separate but related development over the weekend, the League of Women Voters modified a prior, poorly informed stance on DRE voting. At its convention in Washington, a majority of delegates endorsed a resolution calling for ``voting systems and procedures that are secure, accurate, recountable and accessible,'' deleting language saying paper trails were unnecessary.

One of the catalysts for the league's shift was Barbara Simons, past president of the Association for Computing Machinery, a highly respected organization of technology professionals. She helped organize what amounted to a revolt in the ranks.

Simons, a Palo Alto resident, was an early supporter of a campaign (www.verifiedvoting.org) launched by David Dill, professor of computer science at Stanford University. Early last year, Dill begged Santa Clara County officials not to buy paperless voting machines, and he took the issue to the media and other venues.

``I saw a growing mistrust of the machinery itself, a whole intangible issue of voter confidence,'' Shelley said. Then he saw ``an escalating number of reports that showed real problems'' in the performance of the machines, including the potential for unintended software errors as well as malevolent hacking by outsiders. These reports included scathing assessments of systems in other states. And there were hardware breakdowns in California's March primary.

And there was the Diebold fiasco. After concluding it had been misled by the Ohio company's voting-machine subsidiary, California decertified some of Diebold's machines, and told counties they had to make changes before they could use DRE machines even this year. Monday's agreements with Santa Clara and other counties made those changes official.

Four California counties San Diego, San Joaquin, Kern and Solano have sued Shelley, however, saying he overstepped his bounds in requiring such modifications.

Most other states are lagging on these reforms, but the overall trend line is positive, finally. Around America, the public is waking up to the profound danger of unverifiable voting machines. Republican leaders in Congress are still blocking H.R. 2239, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act, which has been endorsed by a growing list of Democrats including California Sen. Barbara Boxer.

Doing what's right

There are many heroes in this tidal shift. They include not just computer professionals and other fair-voting activists who raised their voices but also Bev Harris, a Seattle-area public relations woman. Early on, she started doing a form of citizen journalism (www.blackboxvoting.com) that helped turn a sleeper issue into the matter of national concern.

In the end, though, the pivotal player has been Shelley. He's done what a public official should do: Listen to the arguments, look at the evidence and then reach a conclusion that is logically unassailable. He's taken some risks for doing the right thing. Let's hope the nation will follow his lead.