Diebold woes keep officials cautious
7/19/2005 BY LEESHA FAULKNER Eastern Mississippi Daily Journal
TUPELO - As Mississippi Secretary of State Eric Clark tries to woo Northeast Mississippi county governments into taking the Diebold touch-screen voting machines, supervisors in Lee County and at least one election commissioner prefer to research the issue further.
Clark meets with regional representatives about the voting machines tonight at the Ramada Inn. Lee County officials say they'll attend the meeting, but they're still wary.
Short and simple: Diebold Election Systems has some problems.
"Mississippi voters would be well served by a pause in the process of voting machine procurement to allow a second period of public comment and testing of the Diebold TSX by independent computer security experts," said John M. Wages Jr., election commissioner in Lee County's District 3.
The state has contracted with Diebold Election Systems to buy up to 5,000 of the touch-screen AccuVote TSX machines. The state also has a technical support services agreement for five years.
Counties have until August to decide to take the machines. Clark has promised that the voting machines "will greatly improve the accuracy and integrity of every election in our state."
Federal money will fund 95 percent of the cost to place touch-screen machines in Mississippi under the Help America Vote Act, which evolved out of the brouhaha over Florida's hanging chads in the 2000 presidential election.
Wages has called for an independent investigation of the machines for security flaws before counties elect to use them in all polling places.
Diebold has taken its share of bumps for hardware and software gaffes last year in Texas, California, Maryland and Florida. The media reported a variety of problems during the 2004 presidential election: Machines failed to record ballots, officials can't manually recount tallies; tabulation software malfunctions, ballots too long for touch screens and incomplete ballots presented to voters.
John Gideon, information manager for votersunite.org, an election watchdog group, pointed out that states aren't mandated by the federal law to change to the touch-screen machines.
"In fact, nearly every county in the U.S. is using, and will continue to use, central-count optical scan systems," said Gideon.
It's true, said Clark, that he can't require states to accept the machines purchased by the Mississippi at about $3,200 each. The federal government pays for 95 percent and the state for 5 percent of the cost.
Counties that need extra machines could buy them at a reduced price. Other counties will have to buy approved machines at full price, if they chose not to take advantage of the state's offer.
"It would be a serious mistake for them to opt out," said Clark, "but they legally can."
Other questions abound.
For example, Lee County Supervisors have raised questions about the handicapped accessibility of the new machines. Supervisors President Charles Duke didn't like the way the earphones worked. They might be fine for the blind, he said, but not for the hard of hearing.
Yet, Clark touted the machines as "fully accessible to all voters, regardless of disability. A Mississippian who is blind, hearing or visually impaired or physically challenged can cast his or her ballot in private on the new machines."
Wages has raised the issue of verifying the vote for blind people. The headphones give a blind voter an audio ballot, he said, but there's no verification that particular choice was correctly recorded.
The Lee County election commissioner also pointed out the lack of a "sip and puff" device for quadriplegic voters or those with illness such as cerebral palsy or multiple sclerosis that rob people of their fine motor skills required to touch a precise area on a screen.
Clark also has used languages as a selling point of the machines. All of those purchased in Mississippi will contain English and Choctaw. But Mississippi has a growing Hispanic population statewide and significant numbers of Vietnamese and Chinese along the Gulf Coast and in the Delta.
County Administrator Ronnie Bell recently acknowledged the growing number of Spanish speakers in Lee County and other areas of the region. He didn't know how the state planned to accommodate those voters on the machines.
They don't, said David Blount of the Secretary of State's office, until ordered to by the U.S. Department of Justice. "They make that decision and right now they only require Choctaw."
