New voting machines do well in early tests

But election watchdogs still want more safeguards

By Ryan Morgan, Daily Camera Staff Writer
August 4, 2004

As early voting for the primary gets under way this week, voters and election judges are slowly adjusting to the new electronic voting machines the county purchased this summer, election officials say.

So far, the county has had to contend with minor glitches, but nothing serious, said Tom Halicki, Boulder County's elections manager.

The new equipment, provided by Lafayette-based Hart InterCivic, is being run through its paces both in the voting booth and at election headquarters, where Halicki and others have been practicing for the big day in November.

Election workers staged a mock election last week using 3,200 ballots with fake candidate names and ran them through the machines. They deliberately "over-voted" — that is, voted for the two candidates in the same race, for example, and under-voted to make sure the system would catch those errors.

Simulating a county-wide election that included all of the cities in Boulder County was time-consuming and complicated, Halicki said, and the process didn't run as smoothly as it would have on the voting machines' showroom floor.

"It's a bit more complicated than what you would see if you just went and saw the demo," he said.

But the system worked, he said.

The transition from an old-fashioned voting system to computer-age technology is giving some election workers problems, too. Some voters trying to get their ballots printed have had to wait for a while as workers grapple with the technology, Halicki said.

"We have some election judges who might not necessarily be comfortable with computers," he said.

But workers are slowly becoming more familiar with the system, he said.

A watchdog group called Citizens for Verifiable Voting, meanwhile, is trying to get election officials to conduct a security check to make sure ballots are being correctly read and are tamper-proof.

Paul Walmsley, a spokesman for the group, wants the county to double-check 1 percent of its ballots during the election to make sure the computer is counting the ballots in the way the voter intends.

"I'd like to see the county pick random samples of ballots and compare the way that the computer tabulates those ballots with the way that a human would," Walmsley said.

But Halicki and Hart InterCivic are wary of implementing that option because it could lead to fears that election officials could match voters to their ballots — thereby violating the secret ballot, Halicki said.

The current system is set up to make that impossible, Halicki said. But the perception itself is dangerous enough that election officials want to stay away from that option.

Walmsley said erroneous fears shouldn't be allowed to veto a valid and potentially valuable safeguard.

"That's really a matter of perception," he said. "It's not a matter of reality."

Halicki said the county is still considering the matter. But as a compromise, election officials have invited Walmsley and other CVV members in to examine computer-generated tallies from the mock election with the mock ballots.