New snag for voting machines
Some Utah officials see problems with validity of paper backups

By Glen Warchol
The Salt Lake Tribune    19 August 2005  
  
The latest controversy with state-of-the-art electronic voting machines Utah has ordered is whether their paper backups will qualify for election recounts.
   The Diebold Election Systems machines are at the center of concerns about the accuracy and validity of recounts using the paper trail the machines produce, even if the backup is error-free.
   Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen was among the first to express concerns over recounts using the machines' paper receipts.
   Her qualms have been echoed by California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, who fears the legitimacy of the machines' backup count could be challenged. For instance: Do the paper records, which look like old-fashioned adding machine tapes, meet the stringent state definitions of an official ballot?
   Swensen, however, sees problems at the most practical level. "If we were to have to do a manual recount using the paper trail, it would be an unbelievably complex process that would be more error-prone than the machine itself."
   Recounts would have to be done laboriously by hand, Swensen says, making the recount subject to human error, which usually is far greater than in automated tallies.
   The ultimate resolution of an election recount demand or a mechanized balloting snarl is to go to the paper trail to confirm the electronic vote. Most states call for a small, randomly ed percentage of the paper backup votes be recounted - 1 percent in California and 3 percent in Ohio, for instance.
   In Utah, however, election law does not provide for random sampling in recounts. In Swensen's reading of the law, that means every paper vote must be accounted for.
    Diebold is developing an optical scanner to process the paper trail, but it is not yet perfected.
    Utah is negotiating the details of a contract to buy at least 7,500 Diebold machines with federal money at a cost of $3,150 each.
    Election officials in the lieutenant governor's office were touring Utah's counties to win local support for the voting machines and could not be reached Thursday.
    California's McPherson fears the paper backup records could be challenged as ballots because
they fail to meet traditional requirements of ink, watermark and paper quality.
   Utah's election laws, for instance, requires a ballot to have "precisely the same quality and tint of plain white paper through which printing or writing cannot be seen . . . " and have "precisely the same quality and tint of plain black ink."
   University of California at Berkeley law professor Deirdre Mulligan told The Oakland Tribune legal ballot requirements may have to evolve to meet electronic voting needs. "We have these laws that haven't kept pace with technology."
   McPherson has proposed several states pool federal reform money to research the best way to verify electronic voting.
   Questions surrounding the paper printouts are only the latest snarl involving Diebold machines. Last month, they racked up enough screen freezes and paper jams in a test that California election officials ruled them a failure.
   Utah officials, nevertheless, moved forward with their $27 million contract with Diebold, saying they trust the company will correct the problems.
   Diebold spokesman David Bear said the company will address each states' concerns. He emphasized that even in the California test, no votes were lost, electronically or on paper.
   "It would be unrealistic for us to say we would never have a jam," Bear said. But the company can protect the votes, including the paper backup. "The ballot was cast, the receipt was still there. The machine was just jammed."
   State election officials are searching for voting devices that will satisfy the requirements of the Help America Vote Act of 2002, a federal mandate that followed the 2000 election controversy in Florida.