Candidate skeptical about electronic voting machines.
USA Today. By Dale Wetzel, Associated Press. Aug 7, 2004

BISMARCK, N.D. ? North Dakota should avoid installing "touch-screen" electronic voting machines at the polls, unless they provide paper confirmation of how each person voted, the Democratic candidate for secretary of state believes.

Some state and local jurisdictions have had difficulties with the machines, which record votes electronically and do not use paper ballots. They are designed to be used by people with disabilities, who may have difficulty marking ballots by hand.

Doug Melby, who is opposing Republican Secretary of State Al Jaeger's re-election bid, said he has heard considerable skepticism from North Dakotans about whether the machines' results are reliable.

"Even if the technology were perfect, if people don't trust it ? they're the ones who are voting. They're the ones who have to live with the outcome," Melby said. "If they don't believe that the election was conducted fairly, you've got a big problem right there with credibility."

At present, North Dakota polling places don't use touch-screen machines. Plans to test them in Grand Forks and Williams counties during the June primary election were scrapped. Jaeger said Friday the machines will not be used in November either.

Election Systems & Software, an Omaha company that supplies most of the vote-counting equipment used in North Dakota counties, is testing a touch-screen machine called AutoMark. It is expected to be ready for use early next year.

The machine takes orders from users about how they want their paper ballots marked, and then does the marking, Jaeger said. The ballot is then run through a scanner, which is used to count both the AutoMark ballots and those that were marked by hand, he said.

"It provides those people with disabilities a voting device that they can use, and it also provides a paper trail, because it marks a ballot the same as the one the other voters have access to," Jaeger said.

A majority of North Dakota's counties rely on ballots that are designed for counting by machines. Voters use pencils to fill in ovals by their choices.

In many counties, the ballot is run through a scanner at the polling place, with the machine flagging ballots where a voter may have erred. The voter is then given a chance to correct the mistake.

A new federal voting law says at least one machine designed for use by voters with disabilities must be available in each voting precinct in time for North Dakota's June 2006 primary. The touch-screen machines are intended to meet that requirement.

Melby said the AutoMark machine appears to meet his preferred standard of allowing for paper checking of an electronic vote.

"Technology has proven troublesome in a lot of jurisdictions where it has been used," Melby said. "There's been system failures. There have been unrecorded votes ... I think that it's important for voters, that they have confidence in the systems that we use to conduct our elections."