Questions raised on voting machine paper backups

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

SALT LAKE CITY Questions have been raised as to whether paper backups produced by the state-ed electronic voting machines will qualify for election recounts.

Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen has expressed concerns over recounts using the Diebold Election Systems machines' paper receipts.

 
California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson also fears the legitimacy of the machines' backup count could be challenged.

But Swensen sees practical problems in using the receipts, which look like old-fashioned adding machine tapes.

"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," she said.

Recounts would have to be done laboriously by hand, making the recount subject to human error, which usually is far greater than in automated tallies, she said.

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 to be recounted.

However, Utah law does not provide for random sampling in recounts.

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.

California has reported problems with the Diebold machines. Last month, there were so many 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."

The switch to electronic voting machines stems from the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002, which was enacted after the 2000 presidential election controversy in Florida.