Suit seeking to end e-voting called unrealistic by officials
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
BY KEVIN COUGHLIN
Star-Ledger Staff

Stephanie Harris of Mercer County voted four times in this year's June primary.

The reason, she said, was an apparent malfunction by an electronic voting machine from Sequoia Voting Systems. She said she still has no idea if any or all of her votes were counted by the machine. 
 
Fearing more mix-ups in the Nov. 2 presidential election, Harris is part of a lawsuit filed yesterday to make New Jersey scrap more than 7,000 e-voting machines by Election Day. About 3.3 million of New Jersey's 4.8 million registered voters, spanning 15 of 21 counties, could cast ballots on these ATM-like devices.

A spokesman for Attorney General Peter Harvey said e-voting machines in New Jersey have functioned well for nine years, so there is no reason to alter e-voting systems.

"The question I have is why disrupt the apple cart now if we haven't had a problem? There's been no real suggestion, scientific or otherwise, that the machines have failed or will fail in the coming election," said Markus Green, chief of staff for the attorney general.

Each county tests every e-voting machine with a mock vote in the weeks before an election, Green said.

Logistically, a sudden switch to paper ballots "would be impossible," Morris County Clerk Joan Bramhall said. "You go to a supermarket, they use electronic machines. You charge something, they use electronic machines."

Nearly one in three voters nationwide may use e-voting machines, bought largely with federal funds after Florida's "hanging chad" debacle of 2000.

But computer scientists and activist groups have questioned the security and accuracy of e-voting machines, which use touchscreens or push-buttons to record votes.

"We had so many problems in the 2000 election, I don't want to repeat them in another election that can be called into question," said Harris, 58, a farmer.

Other plaintiffs in the lawsuit are the Coalition for Peace Action, New Jersey Peace Action and Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Mercer), who has introduced a bill to require e-voting machines be retrofitted with printers. Printouts would help voters verify their choices were recorded accurately, and could be used for recounts.

The lawsuit, which names Gov. James E. McGreevey and Harvey as defendants, claims e-voting machines can be reprogrammed to erase or reallocate votes and erase evidence of tampering.

It cites glitches reported around the country in machines from Sequoia and Election Systems & Software, vendors serving New Jersey.

"My clients have tried for many months to get the attention of the governor and the attorney general to do something about this. They've gotten nowhere," said Penny Venetis, a law professor at Rutgers University-Newark handling the case.

Accuracy of e-voting machines is hard to verify, Venetis said, because vendors invoke trade secrecy protections for their software. She cited actions by California, Nevada and Ohio to decertify the same machines used in New Jersey.

The lawsuit seeks a voter-verifiable "paper trail" for all New Jersey e-voting machines. For now, voters should have the option of voting on paper, Venetis said.

The Election Technology Council, which represents Sequoia and other vendors, said e-voting machines offer advantages for disabled voters and reduce the rate of "residual" voting instances where voters cast ballots for too few or too many candidates.

' ' This is a classic case of a solution in search of a problem," said Harris Miller of the Information Technology Association of America, a trade group.