Grass-roots Bucks group shows pitfalls of electronic voting
Forum at county courthouse addresses new federal law.

By Pervaiz Shallwani    The Morning Call   28 June 2005

To comply with federal law, the Bucks County commissioners might have to buy new voting machines by the end of the year in time for the 2006 primary election.

On Monday night, a local grass-roots group, the Bucks County Coalition for Voting Integrity, told the elected officials their decisions will not go unnoticed.

Nearly every one of the 125 seats in the community room at the county courthouse in Doylestown was filled for a forum on voting machine technology and the possible pitfalls of switching to new machines.

The forum addressed topics from problems with new machines on the market to misconceptions about the federal Help America Vote Act, passed in 2002 after voting flaws were highlighted during the contentious 2000 presidential election.

''None of this was new, but it was new to most people,'' said Rebecca Mercuri, a computer scientist who has written about issues with electronic voting.

She said the 2000 election exposed the ''dark, dirty secret'' behind voting problems that have long existed in the country, where ''millions of votes are lost each election cycle'' because of lack of checks and balances in electronic voting.

Mercuri said lottery machines and grocery store scanners have features that could be used in voting machines.

''There are a lot of little things on a [lottery] ticket that they know about the ticket,'' she said, noting it is still anonymous because lottery officials don't know exactly who bought the winning ticket. ''It's not magic. It's food-store technology.''

Mercuri was one of five panelists. She was joined by activists Beth Feehan, Teresa Hommel and Marybeth Kuznik, and Michelle Mulder, an attorney for U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat who has sponsored amendments to federal law.

Bucks County Congressman Michael Fitzpatrick, a Republican, recently joined as a co-sponsor of the bill.

Counties across the country in the rush to meet the standards have bought machines. In some cases, the machines were faulty.

The new federal law has set aside $3.9 billion to be divided among counties nationwide to help with the costs of updating voting machines.

Mulder said one of the misconceptions of the new law is that counties must get rid of outdated machines such as lever machines, which have been used in Bucks County. She said counties can forgo the money to keep the machines.

The county has employed mechanical voting machines at its more than 300 polling sites since the 1950s, but the machines do not meet the standards set up by the federal law.

According to the law, the lever machines the county uses have no way of informing voters that they have missed casting ballots in all races and are not regarded as handicap-accessible.

Commissioners have applied for a $3 million state grant to help purchase new voting machines. If the county receives the grant, the commissioners believe they also would have to provide up to $5 million to buy the machines.

Under the act, commissioners must buy the new machines by Dec. 31 and train elections officials to operate them for the spring 2006 primary.

All three commissioners attended the forum along with county Chief Operating Officer David Sanko.

Commissioner Charles Martin commended the group for getting involved, but said ''it would have been helpful if someone were here to defend the electronic voting machines.''

Commissioner Sandra Miller said ''there are a couple of little things that I had not heard about,'' noting she liked hearing about the accuracy of the county's current lever machines. ''It's just telling me what I have felt for some time. I feel very comfortable with the lever machines.''