Will voting machines make special election suspect?

THOMAS D. ELIAS   Opinion   The Daily Independent    05 July 2005

Even before Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger officially called a special election for Nov. 8, his critics ascribed the action to a desire to rebuild and buff his image through unlimited campaign spending - which would not be allowed if he had let his pet measures slide until next June's regularly scheduled primary.

And it's true there are no limits on what Schwarzenegger can raise for the November vote, while strict limits would apply in June.

But some of his harsher and more cynical critics are claiming he's got another motive: to make sure the vote is greased in his favor.
  

"The real reason Arnold is calling a special election is to make sure it is fixed," claimed one occasional blogger based in Davis.

He and others note that while new state regulations will force all counties using electronic touch-screen voting machines to create voter-verified paper trails in 2006, there is no such requirement this year.

That means votes in ten counties - including large ones like Alameda, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Santa Clara that are often central to election outcomes - may have no paper trail in November, while they must by next June.

Why does this raise suspicions? Because tests done in a variety of venues, including Maryland's Johns Hopkins University, have shown voting software can be hacked to make yes votes show up as no, or the reverse.

Those tests are the reason conspiracy theorists still insist that President Bush's 2004 reelection victory was faked, that Walden O'Dell, the major Cleveland-area Republican fund-raiser who also chairs America's biggest electronic voting machine maker, Diebold Election Systems, made good on his 2003 boast to Bush hat "We will bring in Ohio for you."

The reason for the mistrust is simple: Without paper trails, recounts don't matter. All a recount means is that the same buttons get pushed again, producing the same results.

There have been plenty of apparently innocent problems with electronic voting, too. In Alameda County during the March 2004 primary, problems with Diebold "smart card" encoders affected 25 percent of county polling places, preventing thousands of voters from casting ballots when they wished.

On the same day in Orange County, many voters got the wrong electronic ballots and could vote in races for which they were ineligible affecting districts where they didn't reside. In Merced County, electronic voting equipment delivered to one city had been programmed with ballots for a different city.

Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, appointed by Schwarzenegger when his elected predecessor Kevin Shelley was forced out in disgrace, claims there will never again be such problems. He cites "parallel testing" during the November 2004 election, when voting machines were singled out at random, their activity videotaped all day long, with the tapes compared to the computerized vote count.

"No instances were found in any county using touch screen voting systems where votes were not recorded as cast," he said in an emailed response to questions. "California's voters should have confidence that their ballots will accurately reflect their votes. However, if they have concerns about using a touch screen system, they have the option of voting an absentee paper ballot or a paper provisional ballot at the polls on Election Day."

One problem: paper provisional ballots were not available everywhere in the last election. Will they be in November? The obvious answer to this possible problem of election result credibility is for counties not already equipped with paper trails to get their machines up to speed by November.

"We are talking to people about this," said McPherson deputy Caren Daniels Meade.

But McPherson has no firm leverage, since there's no legal requirement for paper trails this year. Yet if he and Schwarzenegger want to make sure results of governor's special election are beyond suspicion, they must act soon to make sure every county has only machines that spit out paper records which can be hand-counted where vote totals are tight and recounts needed.