E-voting clears final hurdle

State certifies touch-screens for Alameda County; security issues addressed, officials say

By Ian Hoffman, in the Oakland Tribune  12 August 2004

California approved three final counties Wednesday for electronic voting in November, freeing a total of 11 counties to use touch-screen machines.

Secretary of State Kevin Shelley certified Alameda and Plumas counties for full use of their touch-screens and Los Angeles County for early voting only, in exchange for promises they would meet almost two dozen measures for better security and reliability.

The decision sets as much as

20 percent of California voters on course to cast digital ballots this year on machines that state officials acknowledge have security flaws.

But they and local officials say new, tested software and detailed procedures for poll workers have closed off the more unsettling security concerns.

"We are going to be using the electronic touch-screens," said Elaine Ginnold, assistant voter registrar in Alameda County. "We are confident that it is accurate and will record votes correctly."

In late April, Shelley temporarily disallowed e-voting statewide and triggered an uproar among local elections officials. They said he was making impossible demands and usurping their authority.

One by one, each county agreed to tighten physical security of their machines, let voters choose a paper ballot and print vote totals for every polling place, among other requirements. Voting-machine makers handed over their proprietary software for security examination.

Shelley spokeswoman Lauren Hersh called the last of the agreements with the counties "a real relief."

"Everybody at all levels worked very hard to resolve the issues, and it's gratifying that given the hard work, we have a success well in advance of the Election Day," Hersh said. Elections in California are run by local officials, and "we can set up the best of systems, but there needs to be follow-through by the counties."

In a separate decision Wednesday, a panel of state elections officials and consultants recommended approval for Diebold's optical scanning software, clearing its use by 17 counties, including Alameda, which uses scanners for absentee and provisional ballots.

In the case of Diebold, the approvals clear a firm that Shelley has referred for criminal prosecution to provide the instruments of democracy for several million voters.

But a great deal has changed since the winter and spring, when state and local elections officials found evidence that Diebold had misled them and used uncertified, illegal software and poorly tested hardware in their voting systems. The most unsettling of those actions concerned Diebold's newest touch-screen, the AccuVote TSx, which Shelley permanently decertified in four counties. San Diego, Kern, San Joaquin and Solano counties now plan to use optical scanning systems, with paper ballots.

The company cleared testing and national and state approval for new voting and vote-tabulating software, the essence of its voting system. The touch-screens still can be opened with a single key but no longer will have the same password and encryption key nationwide.

California counties will be required to change those for each election, closing off some of the more egregious security holes that might have allowed vote manipulation.

For other security risks, Shelley's office is requiring counties to comply with detailed security plans. Alameda County still expects to deliver its 4,000 touch-screens to polling places days before the election, but they will be replaced if poll workers find seals disturbed.

Alameda County was Diebold's first major West Coast client and has had more problems with its products and services than any other California county. Its central vote-tabulating computer gave thousands of votes to the wrong candidates in the October gubernatorial recall, and almost a third of the county's polling places were unable to offer electronic voting in the early hours of the March primary, when Diebold poll-worker devices broke down.

Despite these problems, Alameda County officials never held a public debate on whether to use its $12 million Diebold touch-screens in November.

"It's disappointing that a decision as important as the future of a county's voting system would not be made in a public manner, especially when the vendor has exhibited questionable behavior and judgment," said Kim Alexander, president of the Davis-based California Voter Foundation.

Alameda County officials say they never had problems with the touch-screens themselves and, in time, Diebold showed it could produce a tested, fully certified and more secure voting system for November.

In the end, said Ginnold of the registrar's office, county officials weighed the security concerns against other touch-screen benefits, such as handicapped accessibility, the system's prevention of overvoting and easy rendering of hundreds of ballot types in Spanish and Cantonese.

In determining whether to keep a voting system, you weigh all of those factors and the needs of your community, Ginnold said. The Board of Supervisors decided actively to keep it.>