California to put e -voting to the test
Touch-screen firms must turn over software for security review

By Ian Hoffman     ANG News   08 October 2005

California is putting the tools of democracy to perhaps the most rigorous testing of any state, ordering voting-machine makers to surrender their proprietary software for security reviews and supply dozens of their machines for mass, mock-election tests.

In memos this week to voting-machine makers and local elections officials, Secretary of State Bruce McPherson laid out the new requirements and ordered the creation of a new office, led by a savvy computer technician, devoted to putting voting machines through their paces before California voters use them.

"We can do it, and I think we should do it," McPherson said Friday.

The move comes as huge sums of federal and state money are feeding voting-system purchases nationwide, and manufacturers increasingly are supplying high-tech computers to record and count the vote.

"I think we need to take some fundamental steps to ensure the accuracy and integrity of the voting process,"McPherson said.

As the nation's largest voting market, California has been a proving ground. Voters' experience using ATM-like touch-screen voting machines and digitized ballots has been mixed, with generally reliable results marred by major breakdowns and lesser glitches.

Vendors, voting advocates and other states watched this summer as McPherson ordered Diebold Election Systems to offer its latest touch screen, the AccuVote TSx, up for mass testing in a San Joaquin County warehouse. For nearly a full day, local elections officials and consultants tapped votes into 96 machines. They found numerous instances of paper jams in the touch screens' paper-trail printer and software crashes of the sort reported by voters nationwide in the last presidential election.

Kim Alexander, president of the Davis-based California Voter Foundation, called the episode "an eye-opener for state regulators."

"To see those screen freezes firsthand is important for understanding how vulnerable these systems are to error and fraud," she said.

McPherson declared the machine unacceptable and rejected it. Diebold appears largely to have fixed the problems. On state orders, the company brought 100 machines to San Diego last week, and by some accounts they seem to have performed better, with a few printer jams in a full day's simulated voting. Alameda County is considering buying that machine, and San Joaquin County wants to use it in the 2006 elections.

Now all voting-machine makers will face the same hurdle. And instead of merely providing their prized software to a third-party firm for the state to check after any problematic election, manufacturers now must hand copies to California elections officials. They plan to recruit computer-security experts, who will sign nondisclosure agreements and study the software for vulnerabilities to fraud or manipulation, something that most vendors have resisted.

"I want to have the information available so we can review the inner workings of the machines in case we have to," McPherson said. "It's a safety precaution for the voters."

Other states, such as Delaware, have a reputation for toughness on voting systems. Maryland recently agreed to let some of the harshest critics of electronic voting explore the vulnerabilities of its Diebold touch screens. But the combination of mass testing and security reviews of software are thought to make California's rules the toughest in the nation.

"It makes perfect sense that the most stringent voting system requirements would be coming out of California because that's been the source of the greatest criticism of electronic voting," said Dan Seligson, editor of Electionline.org, a nonpartisan clearinghouse for election-reform information.

McPherson's new requirements for voting systems, his third in recent months, get generally high marks from voting-reform advocates.

"Overall, it's a step in the right direction," said the California Voter Foundation's Alexander, though she says she wishes McPherson went a step further and allowed the use of paper trails to ensure voting machines work properly on Election Day.

McPherson has said that paper trails ? printouts that voters can see to confirm their electronic ballot choices ? don't meet the legal definition of a ballot and don't provide independent ballot verification for visually handicapped voters. He has opposed legislation requiring local elections officials to count the paper trails in 1 percent of their voting precincts as they have been required to do for paper ballots for 40 years.

The bill is on the governor's desk, awaiting a Sunday deadline for his signature.

Electionline.org recently found that 25 states, led by California, now require some form of paper trails and more than half intend to use them for confirmation of voting machine operation and for recounts.

"What California has done with paper trails has made a difference to the nation, and what California decides to do with them could make a difference nationally as well," Seligson said.