Group lambastes Georgia's voting system

By Julia Malone

Palm Beach Post-Cox News Service

Monday, September 13, 2004

WASHINGTON — With Election Day less than two months away, a conservative group rated Georgia's paperless touch-screen voting system the worst in the nation, with Florida and several other states not far behind.

The Free Congress Foundation, a long-time fixture of the political right, warns in a new report that, if the vote totals are contested on Nov. 2, the result could be a "fiasco," because so many states have installed electronic systems that have no paper ballots that can be recounted.

Georgia, the first state to install a paperless system in all counties, was graded F-minus based on the reliability of the equipment and its capacity for a "verifiable recount."
 The foundation's report card also gave Florida a failing grade, in part because Palm Beach County has installed touch-screen machines to replace the infamous "butterfly" punch-card ballots, which were blamed for the vote count debacle of the 2000 presidential race.

Overall, the group scored the overhaul of the nation's voting equipment as a C-plus.

Nevada was credited with having the best system, using a touch-screen computer that prints out a paper ballot that is visible under glass for voters to check before each vote is cast. The paper ballots are retained as a backup if there are questions about the electronic count.

Kara Sinkule, spokeswoman for Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox, dismissed the group's critique as "a rehash of what's been in the news and on the Internet."

"Our system is more accurate today and more secure than it has ever been," she said.

Georgia officials have long argued that the $54 million touch-screen system is easy to use and popular with voters, despite some glitches when it was debuted in November 2002.

In Fulton County, for example, some machine totals were counted late because poll workers forgot to remove memory cards. But the election result was not affected.

Sinkule said the state would add print-out devices if required but added, "Let's not rush to mandate a paper trail without federal standards in place."

Proposals to mandate printed ballots have stalled in the U.S. Congress as well as in the Georgia legislature.

Even so, a number lawmakers, citizen groups and computer experts continue to raise concerns about the new voting equipment.

Critics, including a group of Atlanta area activists known as Countthevote.org, have charged that the Diebold Election Systems software used in Georgia and elsewhere is vulnerable to hackers.

The software company also has been heavily criticized in California, where some polling places opened late in the presidential primary because machines malfunctioned.

One group, Verified Voting Foundation, founded by Stanford University computer science professor David Dill, recently set up a national hot line (866) OUR-VOTE to allow voters to report problems they see or experience on Election Day.

The hot line is part of a project run by several nonprofit groups, including People for the American Way Foundation and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, to assist voters and monitor elections.

On Nov. 2, Verified Voting Foundation's Web site (www.verifiedvoting.org) will provide a map of the country displaying where problems are reported and describing the incidents, said Pamela Smith, spokeswoman for the group.

In a test run in Florida's primary election Aug. 31, the hot line received nearly 300 reports from voters who said they were given the wrong ballot, had machinery problems or other issues in 14 counties, including Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach.