Elections officials evaluate electronic voting machines

LUIS F. PEREZ

Knight Ridder Tribune News Service

 

PALM BEACH COUNTY - Palm Beach County elections officials Wednesday publicly tested a sample of the thousands of electronic voting machines they'll deploy for the upcoming primary and Election Day.

They also got a taste of the intense scrutiny they'll face during the elections: Routine equipment testing was anything but with a phalanx of reporters and cameramen, a handful of activists and a few candidates on hand. Secretary of State Glenda Hood joined them as well. And she invited George Firestone, a former secretary of state, to observe the pre-election test.

At the end of the day, elections officials said there were no glitches.

In the past years, very few people showed up for the machine tests, Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore said.

State law requires 2 percent, or 84, of the machines be tested in public before an election. All 4,270 voting machines will go through the same testing before the Aug. 31 election.

"Unfortunately, South Florida and Palm Beach County are being held to a much higher standard than anywhere else in the country," LePore said, standing among electronic voting machines chirping away as they tabulated simulated votes.

Hood said election officials recognize the increased attention being paid to Palm Beach County and she's confident that the workers and machines will hold up well.

Not everyone is as trusting of the Sequoia Voting Systems touch-screen machines.

A pre-election test would be more credible if it was done by an independent auditing firm, said Susan Van Houten of the Palm Beach County Coalition for Election Reform. Her group also is advocating for paper verification of votes. That doesn't look like it is going to happen before November, Van Houten said, but her group is pushing the issue for future elections.

Two members of Van Houten's group and Jeff Fisher, a Democrat running against Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, stalled the testing process when they questioned the validity of one machine.

After the chirping of the machines stopped, election workers collected the paper tabulation that each machine spit out. They took the cartridges that contained the election results into the tabulation room with observers following.

Observers looked through a window into a room full of laptop computers. Computers counted the votes and printed out a summary report, which elections officials compared to the results that officials already knew before the test.

Election Canvassing Board member Judge Barry Cohen looked at the results and said: "Everything is perfect."

LePore echoed those sentiments later. The test turned out fine, she said.