Questions linger as computerized voting comes to S.C.

Opponents criticize absence of printout that allows voters to confirm their choices

BY CLAY BARBOUR
Of The Post and Courier Staff

It's the size of a laptop computer and operates by touch. It's versatile enough to be used by the blind and physically impaired. And by everyone's account, it's as easy to use as a voting machine can be.

It's the iVotronic touch-screen voting system, the future of elections in South Carolina.

In November, more than 900,000 South Carolinians in 16 counties will vote on an iVotronic system. They will join nearly a third of American voters nationwide in using computerized systems, up from 12 percent in 2000. Lowcountry voters, however, won't be among them. This fall, Berkeley, Charleston and Dorchester voters will use the old system.

In the counties that have the new machines, the process should be quicker, easier and more efficient for voters and poll workers.

Still, even in the Computer Age, these contraptions are stirring up a huge controversy. Voter activists from California to Columbia have taken aim at the companies pushing such machines, as well as the state officials scrambling to put them in place. The activists want verifiable voting, and they cite the questionable track records of the voting machines.

Federal lawmakers have stepped into the fray, requesting investigations into safeguards and the need for voter verifiable printouts, receipts that assure voters their ballots are correct. Legislation requiring such a printout has been introduced in at least 20 states.

Many people have stared in wonder and frustration at bizarre meltdowns on personal computers. It's easy to imagine similar crashes when computers take over elections.

The new U.S. Election Assistance Commission, created as a result of the Florida debacle of 2000, formed a 15-member committee to, in part, develop standards for the new machines. The standards, however, are not expected for another nine months, long after many states, South Carolina included, have purchased and installed new systems.

Critics say South Carolina is rushing to modernize, ignoring potential consequences. State election officials say such concerns are based on ignorance. They say every election system has its problems, none insurmountable.

But many still fear that hidden deep inside the gigabytes and microchips of a computerized system, out of sight of the voter, lies the potential for fraud, abuse and simple system failure, meaning votes lost, elections stolen, voters cheated.

Is the state opening Pandora's Ballot Box?

VOTING BONANZA

Inside Charleston County's election warehouse in North Charleston are rows and rows of outdated electronic voting machines.

Twenty years ago, these machines were cutting edge. Today they are an embarrassment.

Charleston is one of 14 counties, along with Dorchester and Berkeley, still relying on such machines.

The machines aren't complicated. Voters push buttons to cast their ballots. The votes are stored in cartridges. When the polls close, workers print out the results and take the cartridges to the warehouse.

Problem is, time and use have made the machines unreliable. About 10 percent of them break during each election.

"It's a joke, they're so antiquated," said Jill Miller, the county's elections director. "We are long overdue for getting new voting machines, period."

Charleston is not alone. Most agree South Carolina's election system is in dire need of updating.

In 2000, the state had three basic types of voting machines: punch cards devices, optical scanners and older electronic machines. After the election, officials discovered that the old machines had lost more than 49,000 ballots, either through undervoting (a ballot with no candidate chosen) or overvoting (a ballot with more than one candidate chosen).

The national average for lost ballots in 2000 was 2.3 percent. South Carolina's average was 3.4 percent.

Florida lost 175,000 ballots in 2000 and became a national joke. South Carolina was saved this indignity by overwhelmingly voting for George Bush.

Problems with the 2000 election led directly to passage of the Help America Vote Act, signed by President Bush in 2002. The new law required states to implement and maintain interactive, centralized, computerized voting systems by 2004, or 2006 with an extension, and allocated $3.9 billion to states ($48 million for South Carolina) to help them do it.

The new law was a bonanza for companies that specialize in election machines. They immediately began marketing their computerized systems to anxious states, even though many of the systems still have serious problems with software and hardware.

Nebraska-based Election Systems and Software, the firm that makes iVotronics, is one of the three largest companies in the field.

THE RECORD

On Election Day 2004, ES&S will have more than 37,000 iVotronics in place in 15 states. On Aug. 4, the company officially won a $37.7 million contract to outfit South Carolina with the new system.

The state's upgrade will take place in two phases. Sixteen counties will get the new machines in time for the November election. In 2005, any county that wants the new system can get it.

Charleston, Dorchester and Berkeley counties are expected to be included in the second phase.

In their brief history, nearly every computerized system has experienced machine malfunctions.

Duncan Buell, chairman of the University of South Carolina's Computer Science and Engineering Department, has followed the nationwide controversy over computerized systems. Though he says he's no expert on voting systems, as a computer scientist he advises caution whenever relying on computers.

"I've been around software long enough to tell you that we should be very careful," he said. "Computers are a great thing, but they often have bugs that need to be worked out, and that takes time."

ES&S has, or had, the bugs.

John Gideon of Washington, director of Votersunite.org, an online clearinghouse for voter information, has followed the company for years and said he is amazed that states keep hiring it.

"ES&S has a very bad track record," Gideon said. "Their systems are faulty, and once they get a contract, they do very little to fix the situation. But states keep giving them money."

Some incidents that occurred during the past three years include:

Wake County, N.C., November 2002: ES&S machines failed to count 436 ballots at two Wake County locations. ES&S officials confirmed the machines were defective.

Dallas County, Texas, October 2002: County officials received several dozen complaints from people who chose a Democrat, only to see their vote go to a Republican, and vice versa.

Miami-Dade County, Florida, May 2003: An internal review of election results found that the ES&S system was unusable for auditing, recounting or certifying an election because of a serious software bug.

Broward County, Florida, January 2004: In a special election, with only one race on the ballot, ES&S machines showed 134 ballots in which voters did not a candidate. The winner received 12 votes more than the runner-up. Election officials determined that no recount was possible because there was no record of the original votes.

Marion County, Indiana, May 2004: The county clerk charged ES&S with breach of contract, accusing the company of "surreptitiously" using uncertified software in its machines, installing it under the guise of routine maintenance.

TRUST THE MACHINES

South Carolina Election Commission Director Marci Andino said the state was aware of ES&S' problems, but the group that ed the company was satisfied the problems had been worked out.

"All of these companies have gone through intense scrutiny ... and they've all really cleaned up their acts," Andino said. "The systems are much more secure than they were even five years ago."

ES&S shares this opinion. Company spokeswoman Becky Vollmer said there has been controversy over suspected undervotes in Florida and North Carolina. She and Andino said undervoting is not necessarily an indication of faulty machinery. Some people just forget to mark their ballots, they said.

Andino said also that "hacking" into the iVotronic system is simply not possible. The iVotronic is not on a network and it's not a wireless system. A modem would be used only for a minute or so at the end of the night to transfer vote totals, Andino said. "They'd just plug them in, send (the totals) and unplug them," she said.

THE PAPER CHASE

One of the main complaints voter activists have against computerized systems is the lack of a paper trail for voters.

Most systems can print the results, but they don't offer receipts that voters can view once a ballot is finished.

State and county election officials, almost universally, dislike the idea of such a receipt. They say it would be cumbersome and unnecessary.

"(Proponents of a printout) liken it to an ATM receipt; except think about the size of the ATM receipt," Andino said. "You can't possibly get a ballot on something that small. California did a test election using voter verifiable paper audit trails with voter receipts. I believe the audit was ten, ten and-a-half feet long. A lot of the voters didn't wait for the thing to finish printing. They just left."

Engineers have designed computerized systems that produce verifiable ballots. The machines a finished ballot into a Plexiglas container for viewing. Once the voter is satisfied with the ballot, he pushes a button and the ballot is deposited into a locked box.

ES&S has designed a system that offers printouts, but Vollmer said the decision to use printouts is up to the states. "ES&S is prepared to turn the prototype into a certified, production ready unit," she said.

Andino said printout systems aren't certified for use in South Carolina.

Advocates, unhappy with Andino's explanations for not having a printout, asked Attorney General Henry McMaster to issue an opinion on the matter. They argued that HAVA regulations require a printout for voters to inspect. Last week, McMaster came down on the side of the Election Commission.

McMaster agreed that HAVA requires such systems to produce a permanent paper record with a manual audit capacity. This, he said, allows election officials to check vote totals when needed. However, McMaster said the act does not require that such paper trails be seen and verified by voters after they are produced.

Brett Bursey, director of the S.C. Progressive Network and one of the state's most vocal advocates for a voter printout, said there is little anyone can do now but hope for the best.