A study in overstatement

Editorial    The Standard-Examiner    August 14, 2005

There's an old English proverb that goes something like this: It is equal folly to trust everybody, and to trust nobody.

This bit of wisdom is worth pondering against the back of news last week from both Utah and California. Utah has decided to buy at least 7,500 Diebold AccuVote TSx electronic-voting machines at $3,150 per copy.

But those very same machines, news reports from California say, recently experienced a 20 percent failure rate in a mock-elections test in California. Paper jams and screen freeze-ups afflicted the machines.

Beehive State election officials responded with confidence the Diebold machines will work just fine a stark contrast to media reports and commentary in both California and Utah, which featured much clearing of throats and calls for re-evaluation of the Diebold machines.

The facts, it appears, are slightly less frightful. There were paper jams, California officials explained, but they may have been caused by improper loading and were, in any event, easily corrected. As for the screen freezes, they were confined to a single machine that had to be rebooted after each voter before it was replaced with a working model.

Most important: Not a single vote was lost or recorded incorrectly.

While it's true any problems are cause for legitimate concern, the sky isn't exactly falling. At least not yet, and certainly not based on this evidence.

The Standard-Examiner's editorial board expresses this guarded optimism, having harbored and voiced reservations about electronic voting consistently for the past four years ever since the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) started moving through Congress. (It was passed and signed into law in 2002.) Utah's punch-card system has always worked just fine. Despite Florida's bizarre experience with punch cards in 2000, Utah's experience has been uniformly positive.

But now the state plans to spend $28 million in federal funds to upgrade its system. It is on the verge of signing the contract with Diebold. The machines, according to the requirements set forth in Utah law, have been certified by the National Association of State Election Directors.

It's also worth noting that all states and counties but California that have decided on or already purchased the Diebold machines report excellent success in testing the machines, so far. We see reason for caution, yes, but not for alarm.

Davis, Weber, Box Elder and Cache counties will send a delegation to Georgia later this month to monitor a countywide election using the Diebold AccuVote TSx machines. Depending on how this election proceeds, Utah should have its answer as to reliability. (Utah has yet to certify the technology, but is set to conduct its testing later this year.)

As we see it now, the technology itself does not give us any particular heartburn. Our modest reservations about what to expect come next spring's primary elections have to do with training of poll workers who must transition from mechanical punch-card machines to these more sophisticated electronic devices. Counties up and down the state have always managed to recruit enough civic-minded volunteers, mostly from the ranks of the retired and/or elderly who are able to spend the time it takes to learn the system and provide help to voters. As we see it, if not enough poll workers volunteer because they are nervous about the complexity of the new machines, counties will be in a real bind.

That's why we hope a larger group of volunteers will step forward to donate their time and efforts toward making this system work: people with management experience who can make decisions, and people who are comfortable with computer technology and business machines. They aren't needed to replace those longtime and still-necessary poll workers we enjoy seeing in our neighborhoods, but to augment and help them during this challenging transition.