The battle of the ballot boxes begins: Voting machine makers vie for bid

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

By PAUL BRUBAKER
of The Montclair Times

Six voting machine vendors will face off to try to win the approval of Essex County Elections Superintendent Carmine P. Casciano in an open forum before Essex County freeholders and the public that Casciano arranged in an agreement he made with local voting rights activists.

Casciano scheduled the machine demonstrations for Wednesday, July 27, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at his office, 33 Washington St., Newark, after a surprise pact he made with Montclair voting-rights activist Katherine Joyce during the freeholders? meeting on Wednesday, July 13.

Just before the freeholders authorized $7.5 million for the purchase of new voting machines, Joyce agreed that she and other members of the Essex County Task Force on Voting Rights would not attempt to repeat what they did in June: Convince a majority of freeholders to vote down the funding.

In exchange, Casciano, who will ultimately decide which machine Essex County will buy, agreed to hold the open demonstration offering vendors the opportunity to prove they have the best machines.

However, Casciano has all but sealed a contract with one of the companies that will showcase its machines, Sequoia Voting Systems Inc., based in Oakland, Cal.

Essex County has been negotiating to buy 700 units of Sequoia?s Advantage model, a direct recording electronic (DRE) voting machine that is the state?s most popular voting machine. Nearly 64 percent of the voting machines in New Jersey are Sequoia Advantages.

?I?m still leaning heavily toward Sequoia,? Casciano said, shortly after the freeholders? vote to approve the funding.

The Advantage?s proven track record, and its being a full-faced model that displays the entire ballot in the same way as a pull-lever voting machine, were the two biggest reasons Casciano favors it over the competition.

But the Sequoia machine cannot print a voter-verifiable paper record of ballots cast.

This month, a new state law was approved that requires DREs to have that capability by 2008.

Sequoia Vice President Alfred Charles said that the printing technology is still being developed, but is expected to be completed and certified by the federal government in the next 12 months.

Retrofitting 700 Advantage machines with a record-printing device is expected to cost $1.4 million.

Members of the Voters Rights Task Force wanted Casciano to perform ?due diligence? by considering other machines to avoid what they said would be a costly mistake in buying the Sequoia machines.

The vendors that Casciano invited to participate in the demonstration were on a list that Joyce provided to him soon after their agreement had been made.

Among the voting machines expected to be showcased is a DRE made by Avante International Technology Inc., a company based in Princeton Junction, that prints a voter-verifiable paper record, but is awaiting the state attorney general?s certification.

Another machine made by the Illinois-based Danaher Co. promises ?multiple fail-safe audit trails,? including paper tapes, with its full-faced DRE.

Prototypes made by the Omaha-based Election Systems and Software Co., Liberty Election Systems of Albany, N.Y., and Hart InterCivic of Austin, Tex., are also scheduled to be demonstrated.

All of the vendors are required to submit proposals that reflect specifications of the contract that Essex County has been negotiating with Sequoia, ? i.e., the cost of 700 voting machines and a commitment to provide a voter-verifiable paper-record printing capability by 2008.

Joyce admitted that vendors face an uphill climb in trying to knock Sequoia out of Casciano?s favor.

?It?s a very long shot for Carmine to choose to be the first county in New Jersey to use something that nobody else has used,? Joyce said.

But she was also empathetic toward Casciano.

?He?s got a huge and very complicated job to do. If he screws up, he will get no end of grief,? Joyce said. ?He needs to make elections work well. One of the ways you do that is by using stuff that somebody has used already and endorsed.?

Still, Joyce said the upcoming demonstration shouldn?t be written of as an exercise in futility.

?It?s very worthwhile for him to have the opportunity to be exposed to alternatives to Sequoia,? she said. ?All information is good. All knowledge is good. If our county doesn?t use it, I will be gravely disappointed. As a taxpayer, I will feel like we got the bad end of a financial deal that we shouldn?t have accepted.?

The demonstrations may also be an opportunity for Sequoia officials to address other concerns about a pending contract with Essex County.

Democratic New York City elections Commission Doug Kellner told The Times that he had seen demonstrations of a full-faced Sequoia machine capable of printing a voter-verifiable paper audit trail.

?Since January?they?ve been showing it all around [New York] State,? Kellner said. ?They had a demonstration at the New York City Board of Elections. We had a demonstration in Geneva, N.Y., at the meeting of the [state] Election Commissioners Association. They?ve had a demonstration in Albany.?

But at Sequoia, Charles said those demonstrations exhibited a machine that was not yet available.

?If we could sell it today, we would,? Charles said. ?It isn?t certified yet. It hasn?t gone through federal testing because we haven?t finished internal development.?

But the rumors that Sequoia might have a machine that fits the bill for both Casciano and voting-rights activists raised a suspicion that the company was trying to unload old inventory on Essex County.

Charles said that wasn?t true.

?We would manufacture them new for Essex County,? he said.

Invitations to next week?s demonstrations were extended to elected officials including State Sen. Nia H. Gill, D-34, a Montclair resident who sponsored the legislation requiring paper trails for DREs, and 12th District Rep. Rush Holt, who has advanced similar legislation in Congress.

Casciano also invited Montclair Municipal Clerk Linda Wanat, who chairs the N.J. Association of Municipal Clerks.