No vote yet on touch-screen machines
Diebold: Glitches are technicalities
Saturday, May 07, 2005
Julie Carr Smyth
Cleveland Plain Dealer

Columbus - After it was touted as the only voting machine around that has passed all the pivotal state and federal tests, Diebold's new touch-screen device ran into a snag Friday.

The Ohio Board of Voting Machine Examiners failed to certify the AccuVote-TSX touch-screen endorsed just last month as uniquely qualified to meet government mandates for upcoming Ohio elections.

The state was powerless to certify the machine, in part, because the device has not completed the federal certification process either. The machine's bar-code reader also didn't satisfy the examiners. 
 

Both Secretary of State Ken Blackwell's spokesman James Lee and Diebold marketing director Mark Radke described the glitches as mere technicalities.

But the situation raised the ire of Election Systems & Software, which is fighting in court for Blackwell to extend his May 13 deadline so that ES&S can obtain similar certifications for its machines. The case is scheduled for a hearing Tuesday.

"From our perspective, we certainly understand the rigor of the certification process. It is, and it should be, very, very important to maintaining the integrity of the voting process," said Jill Friedman-Wilson, an ES&S spokeswoman.

"What it really calls into question is this arbitrary deadline at the end of next week," she said. "Why the rush? Why the arbitrary creation of a sense of panic when there's plenty of time to do this and do it right?"

Blackwell reversed an earlier voting-machine decree on April 14 specifically to allow the paper trail-equipped TSX to vie for business at Ohio county boards of election. He said it was the only machine to meet all the necessary federal and state requirements, and that two other qualified vendors - ES&S and Hart Intercivic - were too behind schedule to comply.

But Diebold executives arrived at the examiners meeting Friday without the machine's federal "NASED number," a designation given out by the National Association of State Election Directors after federal certification requirements are met.

Radke said all the testing and reporting are done and that a national review board needs only to confer to bestow the number.

That number, in turn, will be the last step needed for state certification.

He anticipates it will take only two to three days.

Lee said another meeting of the examiners board will be held sometime next week to address the certification and the bar code.

No plans have been made to extend the May 13 deadline, he said.