State recertifies county's voting system

By: DAVE DOWNEY - Staff Writer

Secretary of State Kevin Shelley on Friday recertified Riverside County's voting system, clearing the way for more than 4,000 ATM-like, touch-screen machines to be used in the Nov. 2 general election.

Shelley's order brings to seven the number of counties statewide that have been cleared for electronic voting in the fall. Problems with the machines in the March primary touched off a firestorm of controversy and triggered a ban on their continued use, absent a long list of conditions. The other counties allowed to use electronic voting machines are Orange, Santa Clara, Napa, Merced, Shasta and Tehama.

"I'm pleased that the secretary has honored the agreement that we struck with him," said Roy Wilson, chairman of the Riverside County Board of Supervisors. "It means that we can now plan for the November election."

The county agreed to offer voters the option of casting paper ballots instead of voting on touch screens and provide independent election experts with the system's computer source code so they can check voting results.

Another condition was that telephone and Internet equipment could not be hooked up to voting machines something Riverside County officials said they never had done anyway in 29 previous electronic elections.

The sticking point had been the paper ballots, which county officials said could have cost taxpayers $2 million had the county been required to print one for each of Riverside's 700,000 registered voters.

Then earlier this week, the county Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 to approve an agreement with the secretary of state, calling for about 125,000 paper ballots, which is about one-fourth of the anticipated number of voters.

"I think it was much to do about nothing," Supervisor Bob Buster said Friday, of the secretary's demand that paper ballots be provided. "It's going to be a waste of taxpayers' money. We're going to have a lot of paper ballots sitting here unused."

Still, Friday's order ends a local, electronic voting saga that began when problems with touch screens in the March primary and concerns about their security prompted Shelley in late April to decertify voting systems in all 14 counties that used electronic machines. The saga escalated when Riverside County took Shelley to court over the matter in early May.

A Los Angeles federal judge last week refused to grant the county's request for a restraining order setting aside Shelley's mandate.

Under the mandate, four counties, including San Diego, were ordered not to use touch screens in November. The other 10 including Riverside were given the opportunity to use the machines if they provided a voter-verifiable paper trail or, alternatively, agreed to offer residents the option of voting by paper ballot.

But Buster maintains Riverside County never should have been included in the mandate.

"He (Shelley) seems to ignore the Riverside experience of 29 elections without any of the problems that they are talking about," Buster said. "He doesn't seem to distinguish between systems or counties."