Voting machines probed

Problems in Pa. heighten N.C. officials' concerns about paper-free electronic devices

MARK JOHNSON   Charlotte Observer   23 January 2005

RALEIGH - Local and state officials in Pennsylvania are examining malfunctions and questions with voting machines in three counties the same model machine that lost more than 4,400 votes in North Carolina.

"We continue to be uncertain about these machines," said Michael Coulter, who heads an independent committee examining voting machine mishaps in Mercer County, Pa., where he said machines in 13 precincts erased some voters' choices.

Mercer County, as well as Beaver and Greene counties, along the Ohio border, use the Unilect Patriot voting machine, an electronic mechanism that does not produce a paper ballot and is the same model that lost 4,438 votes in Carteret County, along the N.C. coast.

The Pennsylvania malfunction "sure does raise questions," said N.C. Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, a co-chair of a special committee examining electronic voting machines that is drafting recommended legislation.

The chairs of North Carolina's electronic voting committee have said they expect to end up recommending the use of voting machines that include a paper ballot that can be examined afterward to correct errors.

All three of the western Pennsylvania counties recorded a high percentage of "undervotes" for president, which is when a voter doesn't vote in that race. Mercer County's undervote was 7.8 percent, four times higher than in 2000, when they used old, lever machines.

In North Carolina, state lawmakers are scrutinizing why more than 10 percent of Burke County voters were recorded as not making a choice in the presidential race, an "undervote" rate that is four to five times as high as nearly all the other counties in the state. Burke and Carteret are the only N.C. counties that use Unilect machines.

"We didn't have anything to do with" the Pennsylvania malfunction, said Jack Gerbel, president of California-based Unilect, highlighting a programming error by Mercer County's elections director.

Gerbel said the machine is not confusing for voters, but explained that a pop-up window has been added to the electronic display in Michigan to tell voters who pick a straight-party ticket that they can skip ahead to the nonpartisan races. That helps avoid their touching any individual races and deactivating their choice.

"We're going to have to suggest to our customers," Gerbel said, "to do a better job of training the poll workers to train the voters."

Officials at the Pennsylvania Department of State will re-examine the Unilect machine next month to see whether it still fits the state's 17 criteria in order to be approved, such as allowing space for a write-in vote and protecting the voter's secrecy. Their inquiry was prompted not by Election Day glitches, but by a petition sent by voters in Beaver County who suggested the machines were susceptible to fraud and tampering.

"We don't want to jump to any conclusions," said Brian McDonald, a spokesman for the Department of State, "and blame (the problems) on the system itself until we have more information."

Coulter, a political science professor at Pennsylvania's Grove City College who was appointed to head the Mercer County investigation by the county commissioners, said the machines in 13 of Mercer's 100 precincts would let a voter candidates in the races on several pages of the ballot and highlight the choice, but when the voter reached the sixth page the highlighting disappeared and all the candidates were uned. The voter's choices had vanished.

"People voted all day," Coulter said, "and the election workers did not know to look for that problem."

Those poll workers who were alerted to the problem began telling voters to start on page six and then go back to the beginning of the ballot, and that seemed to circumvent the malfunction, county officials said.

The investigating committee in Mercer spoke by conference call with Gerbel after the election and concluded that the county elections director typed an incorrect command into the software for the machines. The elections director resigned Dec. 31.

Coulter said, however, that Unilect did not answer all the committee's questions to their satisfaction, and the committee is undecided whether to recommend continued use of the machine.

Pennsylvania's Beaver and Greene counties, the only other two in that state that use the Unilect machine, recorded an undervote rate in the presidential race 5.2 percent and 4.5 percent respectively that were at least twice as high as the average in national studies.

Dorene Mandity, elections director in Beaver County, said she is confident the machines worked properly and that she was not concerned about the undervote figure.

"People do not vote for all offices," Mandity said, suggesting that some voters don't understand the machines and "won't ask for help, which is sad."

Back in North Carolina, a member of the Burke County board of elections assisted a voter who had touched the screen to vote for president and vice president, but didn't realize that her vote ed the candidates for both of those offices. When she touched the screen a second time, thinking she was voting for vice president, her choice was uned.

"We've seen no evidence that (the presidential undervote) was the machine's fault," said Greer Suttlemyre, director of the Burke County board of elections.

State Board of Elections officials concluded that voters were confused by the straight party ticket ion and the fact that it does not include the presidential candidate from that party. The undervote in Burke, though, was high for other offices that were included in the straight party ion.