Electronic Voting Machines: California experience should prompt concern for Utah elections

Opinion    Salt Lake Tribune    03 August 2005

California, after extensive testing, has rejected as unreliable the type of voting machine that Utah has decided to use to comply with the Help America Vote Act.
   That, by itself, is enough to cause concern, but what has us even more worried is that Utah election officials are unwilling to take seriously the report from the nation's most populous state that the failure rate for the Diebold electronic voting devices is about 10 percent. California's secretary of state said the expensive touch-screen system that includes a paper record experienced printer jams and screen freezes during a mock primary that was the most rigorous test yet of the Diebold system.
   Diebold is "not good enough for the voters of California," said Bruce McPherson. Nevertheless, Utah's election division director, Michael Cragun, said he is confident the machines that arrive in Utah will be more reliable than those tested in California. "The decision has been made," Cragun said.
   That kind of dogged refusal to consider new information could cost Utahns more than money. Diebold appears to have bugs the size of Buicks, and if they can't be worked out, they could end up casting doubt on the outcomes of Utah elections.
   HAVA, adopted by Congress after the voting fiasco in Florida that threw the 2000 presidential election into limbo for months, requires that states have voting equipment that warns voters of possible mistakes and that gives disabled voters better access.
   Utah rightly requires any electronic system to have a paper trail, and the Diebold machines provide that. However California found that Diebold printers jammed and computers had be be rebooted far too often, creating long lines and causing voters to give up and go home.
   The Diebold system is expensive, at $3,150 for each of the 7,500 voting booths needed for the state. Utah's $28 million share of federal election reform money allocated under HAVA will not cover the cost of all the new voting machines that county clerks estimate they will need for the 2008 presidential election. Counties are required to make up the difference.
   State election officials would be wise to take another look at Diebold and its competitors before casting our lot with a questionable voting system.