Alameda County to use touch-screen voting

Greg Lucas, Sacramento Bureau Chief

Friday, July 23, 2004

Sacramento Alameda County will use its touch-screen voting system in November's election after receiving state approval this week on two major upgrades to the machines.

The county's Board of Supervisors is expected to sign a formal agreement with Secretary of State Kevin Shelley next week allowing the county to use its 4,000 machines, which were banned by Shelley over security fears in April.

"The main impediments to using the touch screens are behind us,'' said Elaine Ginnold, Alameda County's assistant registrar. "That's a good thing."

Since April, when Shelley banned the use of some 40,000 electronic voting machines in 14 counties, eight counties have been recertified by the state after meeting a list of criteria imposed by Shelley including offering voters a choice of paper rather than electronic ballots.

Of the 14 counties, four Solano, San Joaquin, Kern and San Diego must change their voting systems because the systems have yet to receive federal approval.

But the remaining 10 were given a chance to continue to use their electronic systems if they met Shelley's conditions, many of which, such as allowing random testing of machines by state elections officials, were already met by the affected counties in the March election.

Eight of the 10, including Santa Clara and Napa, have met Shelley's conditions and now have permission to use their electronic systems this fall. Only Plumas and Alameda counties remain uncertified.

"Both counties are working with us,'' said Doug Stone, Shelley's press secretary. "The key condition for recertification is that counties implement enhanced security measures sought by the secretary. The improved security will provide greater voter confidence in these systems and prevent the possibility of tampering. "

Alameda County, which uses touch screen machines made by Diebold Election Systems, had problems in the March election with the encoder, which activates the voting machine.

Of the 178 encoders used by Alameda in the election, 158 failed.

One of the changes approved this week by Shelley's Voting Systems Panel, which oversees the election technology used in California's 58 counties, was an upgraded encoder.

The panel's action must be approved by Shelley, who could act as early as next week.

The encoder upgrade allows the county to change the manufacturer's password that activates the voting machines.

A fear expressed by Shelley and other critics of electronic voting is that if the maker of the machines is the only party to know the password, the ability to manipulate voting results exists.

Also approved by the state was a correction Diebold made to the voting system's ballot counting software.

In the March election, a glitch caused some votes in San Diego to be switched to the wrong candidate. Alameda experienced the same problem in last fall's gubernatorial recall.

The new software is designed to prevent that from happening.

But despite Shelley's certification of the systems used by the 10 counties, most will still face additional costs by his requirement that all polling places offer voters a paper ballot alternative.

Alameda won't. It offered paper ballots as an option in the March election and has already budgeted to do so again in November.