Electronic vote system slated here is rejected 
By Daniel J. Chac?n    San Diego UNION-TRIBUNE

July 30, 2005

The electronic voting system that San Diego County planned to start rolling out in November has been rejected by the Secretary of State's Office.

In a mock election, machines turned off, screens froze and papers jammed.

The voting system has a checkered past. In 2004, hundreds of polling places opened late and voters were turned away when a computer glitch paralyzed the touch screens.

Secretary of State Bruce McPherson said the voting machine failed 10 percent of the time during testing. He notified Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems Inc. on Wednesday that its system was "not suitable."

"We certainly can't take any kind of risk like that with this kind of device on California voters," McPherson said in a statement released yesterday. "I want all voting systems used in California to be secure and user-friendly."

Diebold plans to fix the problems and reapply for certification, company spokesman David Bear said.

"As I understand it, there were 10 paper jams," he said. "If you have a printer, you have the possibility of this, but you certainly want to lessen that possibility."

Registrar of Voters Mikel Haas, who planned to use the touch-screen machines in November, but only at the registrar's office, said he's glad that problems are being addressed now.   
"We're not going to put a system out there that doesn't work, and that's why they do state testing," he said. "If they discovered something is amiss and haven't quite got it yet, we don't want it in our community."

The county bought a $31 million electronic voting system from Diebold that malfunctioned during the March 2004 primary. The problems caused more than one-third of polling places to open late. Some people didn't vote. A month later, then-Secretary of State Kevin Shelley banned San Diego and three other counties from using the machines for that fall's general election.

Shelley gave California counties using electronic voting machines until 2006 to have a system that allows voters to check their votes on paper or on a listening device after casting their ballots.

In the meantime, Diebold has been providing the optical-scan voting system, which was used in last November's general election and in the city's special election Tuesday, at no cost.

The county hasn't paid for the touch screens yet.

"I'm concerned for the counties (that bought these systems), but I'm very heartened that our new secretary of state has drawn a hard line on voter security and didn't allow the machine to be rushed through the testing," said Kim Alexander, president of the Davis-based California Voter Foundation.

The group encourages counties to use an optical-scan system.

"It's a ballot marked by the voter's own hand and can be used to verify the vote if there's a problem," she said. "It's more secure, more transparent and less expensive" than other electronic voting systems.