Security measures slow vote count in Georgia elections

The Associated Press - ATLANTA

Ballot-counting in next month's Georgia elections may be slowed by security software, some local officials say.

The problem involves software given to Georgia by Diebold Elections Systems of Ohio, which has a $54 million contract to supply the state with touch-screen voting machines. The software was added to all voting machines last spring.

The security software is designed to make electronic vote tampering more difficult. But it has caused a slowdown in local elections.

"We may go from five or six hours (counting votes) to maybe getting results in the next day," Gwinnett County Election Supervisor Lynn Ledford said.

In a June special election in Coweta County, ballot counting went so slowly that election officials first thought something was wrong with the system. A similar delay also occurred in Fulton County in a referendum vote that same month.

Last month in Cobb County, it took more than four hours to tally votes for a sales tax referendum, despite a low voter turnout and the fact that fewer than half the county's voting machines were in use.

Glitches were expected because of the new security software, said Beth Kish, Cobb County's elections supervisor. And delays may continue in next month's elections, she added.

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

The problem may be most pronounced in larger counties, some election officials warned.

Georgia election officials pursued touch-screen voting following widely reported problems in Florida during the 2000 presidential election.

"The fact that we now have a slight delay over what we had two years ago is, I think, a worthy trade-off for enhanced security," Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox said.

Cox, who led the switch to touch-screen voting, is currently running for governor.

She said county officials are sharing information on how to speed up the process. Hopefully, counting will go faster as election workers become more familiar with the new system, she said.

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