Standards lacking for voting machines
Saturday, July 10, 2004
By G. PATRICK KELLEY Repository business editor

GREEN — Most Ohio counties won’t be using electronic balloting machines in November.

The original deadline set by the federal Help America Vote Act was the Nov. 2 election, but Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell received a waiver because of security questions.

Those security problems have prompted all but four counties to pull back on plans to replace punch cards and lever voting devices. The rest of the state must complete the conversion to electronic machines by the 2006 primary election.

Although security is still a prime issue, it’s likely that most counties that buy their machines next year will be purchasing models with a verified voter paper trail. The paper trail is a sore point with electronic voting critics, who say the “receipt” that would be printed after voting will be a record for recounts.

The problem is that the federal government and all 50 states haven’t even settled on standards for voting machines, much less the addition of printers.

Diebold Election Systems is working on some solutions, said spokesman Michael Jacobsen. California came out with a first draft of paper trail standards several weeks ago. Diebold was working on prototypes before that, but also is looking at the California standards, he said.

Blackwell told the U.S. Election Assistance Commission during its meeting in Houston, Texas, last month that elections vendors need common standards. He also emphasized the need for common security standards across the nation.

“The vendors are looking for some sort of uniform standard,” said Carlo LoParo, spokesman for the Secretary of State.

Ohio General Assembly has mandated that the paper trail be in place for the May 2006 primary election, he said. Although it hasn’t allocated the funding, the assembly pledged up to an additional 20 percent of the original cost of the machines to pay for the printing mechanism.

Uniform national standards may not be possible. Jacobsen said California has issues relating to language requirements for the paper trail, which must be in the language of the voter.

“In California, that’s eight or nine languages in some counties,” he said. “That will have an impact on the cost.”

Diebold is showing prototypes to ed election officials, but Jacobsen said it’s still too early to know how much the final version will cost.

LoParo said there’s plenty of time before electronic voting must be ready to go. He agreed it’s still too early in the process to know final standards or costs.

“We’ll have to wait and see how it shakes out,” he said.