Voting problems draw out intense activists

MARK JOHNSON  Charlotte Observer   25 January 2005

RALEIGH - State lawmakers considering how to fix problems with the state's voting machines recently watched a computer security expert show their committee how easily and quickly a saboteur could hack into the type of electronic voting systems that many counties use.

The expert has a computer industry certification as an "ethical hacker," which lets him hack into systems legally to test security.

The General Assembly's committee on electronic voting reform is studying flaws in electronic voting machines, some form of which are used in most N.C. counties. The small crowd that has loyally attended each meeting is an intensely interested group, more passionate than the bland hallways of the legislature are accustomed to.

They want a paper ballot that the voter can see and officials can use for recounts, citing an electronic voting machine in Carteret County that lost 4,438 votes in November in their arguments. They didn't rally to the Capitol through expensive mailing lists, such as the major parties or special interest groups cultivate. They communicate through e-mail, Web site message boards and word of mouth.

"They have been actually urging us to do this for a year," said N.C. Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, a Democrat from Chapel Hill who co-chairs the committee.

"We have been snowed with information, links to articles, persuasive arguments ... This is probably the new wave of grass-roots activity," Kinnaird said. "They would give us the names of these experts and our staff would look them up. All of this really has been dug up by the folks who are the grass roots behind all this."

The committee is drafting suggested legislation to remedy what problems it can and, ultimately, to heal wounded public confidence in voting.

The bills likely will be considered in the session that starts Wednesday.

The expected proposals include requiring some form of paper ballot that voters can see and verify, limiting counties to a choice from two or three types of voting systems and giving state officials access to computer programming inside the voting machines. Several of the proposals grew out of complaints or ideas from the paper ballot activists.

Joyce McCloy, 45, who runs the Yahoo message group to which many of the paper ballot activists belong, was laid off from Wachovia in Winston-Salem and now cares for her 81-year-old mother.

"I was trying to find a group of activists in North Carolina to support so we could have voting systems with integrity. There weren't any, so I drafted myself," McCloy said. "I've never been an activist before."

At the lengthy meetings, she and other members take notes, raise questions, congratulate speakers with whom they agree afterward and challenge those with whom they don't. They sometimes exhibit little patience with those who question or disagree with them, a fervency more commonly seen on issues such as gun control or abortion.

"I wish my Republican leadership could see themselves from here," wrote Chuck Herrin, the computer security expert who testified, in an e-mail to the Observer, complaining about Republicans refusing to address possible voting system flaws. "When an elected official dismisses and ridicules credible evidence given by credible people, they destroy their OWN credibility."

They hail from across the state and list more than 2,000 computer scientists and experts who back up their arguments.

Some suggest there is an organized opposition to them within government and corporations.

"All the arguments on the other side are just rubbish basically sales talk from the computer manufacturers that is all that the (State Board of Elections) members listen to," wrote Andrew Silver, a Hillsborough epidemiologist and member of the NC Coalition for Verified Voting message group, in an e-mail.

In some of the coalition's postings on its message board:

? Silver likens voting machine manufacturers to scandal-ridden Enron and Arthur Anderson, "crooks," and posted a message: "Urge Edwards and Kerry to unconcede."

? Others announce they are abandoning the Democratic Party because only one Democratic U.S. Senator objected to the electoral vote in the presidential race.

? Clyde Michael Morgan, who also spoke at the committee meeting, argues that paper ballots mailed out and returned by mail or to a ballot station would save millions. Morgan, who has run for office himself, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the 1983 shooting death of David Anthony "Fat Man" Harvey and served five years in prison. He maintains his innocence and has gotten his voting rights restored.

"Whenever your concerns are based on paranoia, you have to look for some kind of conspiracy," said George Gilbert, elections director in Guilford County. He has drawn some of the coalition members' sharper comments because he criticizes paper ballots. Guilford County uses electronic voting machines.

David Allen, a former computer systems engineer from Winston-Salem and pioneer on electronic voting flaws, doesn't buy into conspiracy theories but understands why others do.

In one example that fueled fears, Waldon O'Dell, CEO of Diebold, a large electronic voting machine manufacturer, wrote a fund-raising letter in 2003 for President Bush's re-election, promising Republicans that he was committed to "helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes" to Bush.

"If there is a problem that there is an element of the public (that) is deeply suspicious of these voting machines," said Allen, who now publishes book collections of Internet comics, "who can blame them when election officials and the companies have not been forthcoming."

Allen said he doesn't bother with "circumstantial" evidence of subterfuge when there is clear evidence that the voting machines "simply don't work."