Security fix assures long election nights

By RICHARD WHITT
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 10/13/05

Software installed to improve security in Georgia's new touch-screen voting machines has significantly slowed the process of counting ballots ? and it might not get much faster for next month's municipal elections or statewide and U.S. House elections in 2006.

Although election officials believe adjustments could yet improve the speed, some local officials aren't so sure.
 
NEW SECURITY:
HOW IT WORKS
? The security software in each touch-screen machine encrypts ? or codes ? votes onto a data card in the machine as you vote. When polls close, data cards are removed.
? Some counties electronically count votes in precincts and transmit the scrambled information by modem for unofficial results.
? Before results are made official, all data cards must be taken by hand to a central election office, where they are ed into several touch-screen machines connected to a tabulating computer.
? After an electronic handshake to verify the data card is legitimate, the ballots are downloaded into the computer, which decodes the data and uploads the vote count.
? This process takes about 30 seconds for each data card.  

"We have actually taken steps backward," says Gwinnett Election Supervisor Lynn Ledford. "We may go from five or six hours [counting votes] to maybe getting results the next day."

Several metro Atlanta counties have experienced the slowdown in local elections.

Last month, it took Cobb County more than four hours to count votes for a sales tax referendum ? an election in which one in 10 eligible voters cast ballots and fewer than half of the county's voting machines were in use.

In June, Fulton County election officials didn't finish counting votes on the Sandy Springs referendum until nearly midnight.

And in Coweta County, counting ballots in a June special election went so slowly that election officials first thought something was wrong with the system.

Led by Secretary of State Cathy Cox, Georgia election officials began considering touch-screen voting following the debacle of the 2000 presidential election in Florida.

"The fact we now have a slight delay over what we had two years ago is, I think, a worthy trade-off for enhanced security," Cox says.

Expect long nights

Cox, who is running for governor, says county election officials are sharing information on how to speed up the process, and they hope counting will go faster as election workers become more familiar with the the new system.

But some local election officials worry that a general election requiring all of their voting machines will be excruciatingly slow, particularly in larger counties.

All of this is bad news for candidates waiting for results at parties or people watching TV or scouring the Internet for returns on election night.

"The balloons won't fall ... I'd miss that," says Miranda Dillard, a registered voter and a music teacher at Paideia School in Atlanta. "I want votes to be counted correctly ? we don't want a repeat of Florida ? but there ought to be a balance between security and speed so we can enjoy the excitement of election night."

30 seconds per ballot

The problem can be traced to new security software, given to Georgia by Diebold Elections Systems of Ohio, which has a $54 million contract to supply the state with the touch-screen machines.

The software was added to all voting machines last spring. It encrypts the transmission of election data from precincts to county election headquarters, making electronic vote tampering, internally or externally, more difficult.

Votes from machines are now coded onto a data card. Then, those cards have to be decoded and counted by a computer before the vote is official.

Before the new security measures, computers decoded the data cards almost instantly. Now, it takes about 30 seconds to process each data card ? and keep in mind, there are about 2,000 data cards used in Cobb County alone.

All of this explains why Sandy Springs residents waited ? and waited ? for results on that new city's incorporation vote.

"It was just a shocker for us to have that type of delay in June," says Fulton County's elections chief Cynthia Welch, who watched the painstaking process.

Speed or security?

Cox admits it's a balancing act between speed and security.

"I'm sure you will talk to people in this state who think we can never have too much security," she says. "Certainly I think this enhancement was a good thing for our machines."

Even though there hasn't been a recorded incident of fraud involving the system, some people simply don't trust it.

Since touch-screen voting debuted, Cox has faced steady criticism from a small but vocal group of Georgians who say the system is vulnerable to manipulation. And several respected computer security experts have suggested the machines' software can be tampered with to change the outcome of elections.

To pacify uneasy voters, the state is considering retrofitting the machines with printers so voters could double-check their on-screen choices. Creating a paper trail could slow the vote count even more ? if those ballots were used in the official count, says Cox's spokesman Chris Riggall.

Georgia is the only state that uses the Diebold machines in every precinct.

Some counties and cities in other states that use Diebold machines have the enhanced security system, but others do not, says David Bear, a spokesman for Diebold.

Maryland, Ohio, Mississippi and Utah are phasing in Diebold touch-screen machines. Computer consultants in Maryland first raised security concerns, resulting in the new software.

Linda Lamone, Maryland's administrator of elections, says she's unaware of any complaints of slow vote counts during statewide elections in 2004.

In the meantime, in Georgia, the debate over speed and security continues.

Cox remains confident

Beth Kish, Cobb County's elections supervisor, says glitches were expected because of the new security software.

But, she warned we shouldn't expect quick counts in next month's municipal elections.

"Candidates are going be frustrated," she says. "When we had optical scanners we were done in an hour or an hour-and-a-half. That will not happen again. It just won't happen."

Looking forward to next year's governor's race, Cox expects to know the outcome before midnight on election night.

"I don't think anybody is telling you it's going to be the next day," says Cox. "We are so far away from the nightmarish days of waiting for those punch cards to come in, I'm not the least bit afraid of going back to that."

Even if there is a wait, it won't bother Marietta Mayor Bill Dunaway, who is running for re-election in November.

"I'm so old I date back to the old paper ballot," says Dunaway, who is 66. "So anything is faster than what I grew up with."