Report highlights need for added security in use of new electronic voting machines
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 Fate of Beaufort County optical-scan ballot system still up in air
Published Tue, Jul 6, 2004
By CAMILLE GERWIN
Special to The Gazette
WASHINGTON Although Beaufort County has not yet decided whether it will abandon its voting machines to follow the state's plan to move to a uniform electronic system, two studies released this week recommended increased security precautions to ensure the reliability of electronic voting.

Beaufort County officials have protested the announcement in April that South Carolina plans to buy electronic voting machines from a single vendor, which has yet to be ed. The local election leaders cited the lack of a verifiable paper trail as a security concern.

"We believe there is legislation in place that says the counties can choose which system to use," said Agnes Garvin, director of the Beaufort County Board of Elections and Voter Registration. "The state is usurping the county's authority."

Beaufort County officials have not decided whether to go along with the state plan, Garvin said. If the county refuses to comply, it will continue to use the optical scanning machines it bought in 2000 and will not receive its share of the $1.2 million in federal money allotted to South Carolina by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to voting systems nationwide.

Beginning in August, the county's optical scanning machines will undergo maintenance to prepare for the upcoming elections. County officials have not set a date to decide whether or when they will upgrade with the rest of the state.

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law released a report Tuesday recommending ways to improve the reliability and security of direct-response electronic voting machines in the 2004 elections.

"We recognize that the election is fast approaching," said Deborah Goldberg, democracy program director at the Brennan Center. "But we have specifically designed these recommendations to be limited in scope so that they can be implemented over a short period of a few months."

The recommendations include retaining independent security experts to assess potential vulnerabilities, providing a training program on security procedures for all election officials and workers, establishing regular reviews of facilities and operating logs, and preparing standardized procedures for responding to possible security breaches.

Garvin said Beaufort County already follows some of the proposals, such as extensive training and use of the roving technicians.

Absent from the report is a recommendation to require a paper record for verifying voting results, the security issue in electronic voting that most concerns Beaufort County officials.

"The issue of paper or no paper is not the focus," said Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. "(These recommendations) defer that until after November but concentrate on steps that can be taken now."

Goldberg said the electronic systems have lower rates of lost votes than other systems used in the Unites States optical scanners that scan ballots with filled-in circles, lever machines, punch cards and paper ballots.

But Garvin praised optical scanners, saying they minimize the risk of human error.

"You still have people out there (who) do not use ATM machines or computers and now you're telling them that to vote they need to use electronic machines," she said. "(But) most of the voting-age public is familiar with fill-in-the-oval. It's something we did in school."