State reviews voting machines a second time

MARC LEVY  Associated Press   22 April 2005

HARRISBURG, Pa. - For two weeks, Jack Gerbel has criticized the state's decision to decertify his company's touch-screen voting machines from use in Pennsylvania.

On Friday, however, a second review by the state consultant who recommended decertification of the UniLect Corp. Patriot voting machine, which has been used in three western Pennsylvania counties, did not appear to go much better.

Consultant Michael Shamos appeared to have difficulties getting the touch-screen system to respond to his touch during the four-hour review in a state Capitol hearing room. He would not, however, indicate what he planned to write in his report to state election officials.

"Humans have to live with certain inconveniences," Shamos, a Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor, told reporters after the review. "The question is, do they rise to the level of threatening the safety of the election?"

The state's April 7 decision to decertify UniLect's machines - the first time the state has taken such action - sent officials in Beaver, Greene and Mercer counties scrambling to set up a new voting system for the May 17 primary election.

Gerbel protested the state's decertification forcefully enough to prompt the second review.

Before the test, Shamos took Gerbel to task over his critical comments and repeatedly asked him to explain alleged inconsistencies in the machines' performance. Afterward, he told Gerbel to speak up immediately if he felt there was anything unfair about the second review.

"I don't want to read about it in the newspaper," Shamos said.

Gerbel apologized, saying he had not meant for his comments to reporters to be "inflammatory," but remained unbowed. He again criticized Shamos' first review as "extremely wrong."

"We've got lots of units out there and nobody has ever found fault with it," Gerbel, president of California-based UniLect, said after the hearing as he packed the machine into its case. "Can people find fault with anything? Yes."

UniLect has "thousands" of machines in four other states, said Gerbel, who suggested that the Pennsylvania decertification had harmed his company's business.

That review had been prompted by a group of Beaver County voters who had protested the voting system, but a separate study by Grove City College researchers also raised questions.

That study indicated that the "undercount" - the difference between the number of voters who cast ballots and the total votes counted - in November's presidential vote was substantially higher in the three Pennsylvania counties served by UniLect's machines than the 1.5 percent average for a group of 24 rural counties.

Department of State spokesman Brian McDonald said a decision on whether to uphold the decertification could come next week.