Electronic voting booths arrive in area

By Joanne Huist Smith

Dayton Daily News    17 August 2005

DAYTON | ? Electronic voting machines have arrived in the Miami Valley, and elections officials are sweating over security and scheduling public information blitzes.
The Help America Vote Act, passed by Congress in 2002, requires counties to upgrade their voting systems by the 2006. Boards of elections in 49 Ohio counties, including four in the Miami Valley, expect to use electronic voting machines this Nov. 8.

Some voting experts predict long lines at the polls and new-system glitches as voters encounter electronic voting for the first time.

"We're talking about an unprecedented experiment," said Dan Tokaji, an Ohio State University law professor. "Even in the best possible scenario, there are going to be problems."

Voters in Montgomery, Greene, Miami and Darke counties will be casting ballots on machines built by Diebold Election Systems. Early models failed an initial security test for the Ohio secretary of state, and critics contend there is potential for things to go wrong.

In April, Diebold fixed its security problems, added a printer that produces a paper record of the vote, and became the first electronic voting system certified in Ohio, said James Lee, spokesman for Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell. Warren County is considering using an optical-scan voting system manufactured by Elections Systems and Software Inc. of Nebraska, but will not make the change until 2006.

"Without a doubt, it's important voters have confidence that once a vote is cast, it will be counted the way it was cast," Lee said. "The Diebold machine has been through federal and the state testing."

Tokaji fears the paper trail on the Diebold system will lull voters into a false sense of security. In a recent test of the machines in California, printer jams were a problem, he said.

Teaching the public

"Given the fact that we've got a new system in place, allow plenty of time for voting. Beyond that, there's not a lot voters can do," Tokaji said.

But, Mike Jacobsen, spokesman for Diebold, said the printer jams happened a total of 10 times out of 10,720 total ballots cast.

"This is an efficiency rate of 99.9 percent," he said.

Meanwhile, county boards of elections are launching education campaigns to teach voters to use the new machines and convince them that their votes will be recorded and tallied accurately. In most area counties the new machines replace the punch-card voting system that was blamed for confusion and an excessive number of uncounted votes in the 2000 presidential election, particularly in Florida.

Richard Saphire, a University of Dayton law professor, said it's too early to know which of several electronic machines on the market works best, but he supports the change. "Counties that used punch cards will have less spoiled ballots with the electronic voting machines," he said.

Security from hackers

The Diebold system is independent, and the voting machines should never be connected to the Internet or networked at the polls, said Steve Harsman, Montgomery County elections director.

"Without access to the voting machines, there's no way to hack into the system and manipulate the vote," he said.

The Greene County Board of Elections plans to install bars on its lower windows as added security for its new touch-screen voting machines. Montgomery, Miami and Darke counties will keep theirs stored behind double-locked doors.

"We want people to see we're serious about this (security)," said Tracy Smith, Greene County elections director.

How it works

There are no paper ballots. Images of the ballots are burned on a memory card that poll workers into the voting machine on Election Day. Each machine has a battery in case of power failure.

Instead of a punch card, poll workers encode for each voter an access card about the size of a credit card. The access cards must be re-encoded after each use.

"The ballots are tested and retested by Democrats and Republicans in our office," Smith said. "It doesn't come down to an electronic ballot versus a paper ballot. It comes down to individuals trusting the poll workers."

The systems offer several advantages, supporters say.

? The machines are easy to use. Insert the access card and a ballot appears on a screen. To vote, touch the screen next to your candidate's name and an "X" appears. If you've made a mistake, touch the "X" and your ion disappears so you can re-.

? The machines give voters multiple chances to review their choices, Harsman said.

? An enclosed, printed display ? that one can see, but not touch ? enables the voter to view and verify ions. Again, voters have a chance to change ions before casting their ballots.

Other issues

Critics remain worried that the technology is susceptible to fraud or breakdowns that will prevent people from voting.

David Allen, a North Carolina computer systems engineer and voting activist, is concerned about software freezing up during an election, also a problem during the California testing.

"Boards of election don't have computer engineers on staff. They don't have money in the budget for those kinds of people," he said.

A Diebold spokesman said the California screen freezes might have been caused by extreme heat (above 90 degrees) in the non-climate-controlled warehouse where the testing took place.

"This issue is also being addressed," Jacobsen said. "Every vote was cast and accurately recorded during the test elections, and not a single ballot was lost."

A drawback to the system: Machines must be stored in a secure and temperature-controlled environment, not at polling places like the punch-card machines. For some municipalities and school districts, that could mean added expense for special elections, Harsman said. Training poll workers to feel comfortable with the new system also is critical, said Beverly Marker, Darke County's elections director.

The Help America Vote Act encourages high school and college students to get more involved in the process by becoming poll workers, but Harsman, Smith and Marker said they have confidence their older poll workers can learn to use the systems.