New Voting Experience
November 15, 2005
By MARK PAZNIOKAS, Hartford Courant 

 
MANCHESTER Santa Claus spent a lonely Monday at the Buckland Hills mall, where it's already beginning to look a lot like Christmas. One lap, no waiting.

Different story across the atrium. From morning till night, visitors waited for a chance to be among the first in Connecticut to test computer gizmos that every town will just have to have by next fall - a new generation of voting machines. 
   
Yes, Virginia, in an era of voter apathy, people stood in line for up to two hours just to test three electronic voting machines, then fill out a detailed questionnaire that will help state officials decide how votes will be cast and counted in the near future.

"We were amazed," said Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, whose office is about to certify one or more machines for use in next year's elections. "Santa was right across the way, and he had no business, poor guy."

Connecticut's grudging embrace of technology that is new, although hardly cutting edge, is inspired by a new federal law.

The Help America Vote Act, known as HAVA, set new standards for voting machines: They must provide an audit trail to guard against fraud; and they must be usable without assistance to voters who are disabled.

The law requires at least one HAVA-compliant machine in every polling place next year, but an advisory opinion issued by the federal Election Assistance Commission two months ago significantly raised the stakes: As interpreted by Bysiewicz, the opinion rules out any future use of Connecticut's decades-old lever machines.

The attorney general's office is seeking a clarification, but local registrars of voters who checked out the new machines Monday are preparing for the worst: the first new voting system for the Land of Steady Habits.

In Hartford, that means training more than 300 poll workers to staff 23 polling places, using machines that will not be certified for use in Connecticut until December.

Registrars met Monday morning with representatives of the three contending companies: Danaher Industrial Controls of Simsbury; Avante of Princeton Junction, N.J.; and Diebold Election Systems of Texas.

But to see the machines, they had to go to Manchester, where Buckland Hills management provided space in the atrium outside J.C. Penney, near kiosks where shoppers can buy pierced earrings and cellular phones.

"This is a joke," said Frank Maffe, the Manchester Democratic registrar of voters. "This process is terrible."

Shirley Surgeon, the Hartford Democratic registrar, was more sympathetic.

"Everyone is under a compressed schedule," Surgeon said.

Registrars and political insiders were in abundance Monday, but so were curious voters such as Chris and Gioia Zack of Wethersfield, who stopped by with their 15-month-old son, George.

Chris Zack said he thought the old machines were fine, but he found the new ones to be easy to use. "And the security seems to be better," he said.

Votes are cast on two machines by touching a computer screen. The third system uses a ballot that is placed over illuminated buttons. All systems provide audio instructions over headsets for the visually impaired.

Connecticut law requires that the new machines produce a paper trail that can be seen by voters.

The secretary of the state's office is paying the University of Connecticut's Institute of Social Inquiry $26,000 to survey visitors to Manchester and four other demonstration sites about the new machines. Chris Barnes of UConn said the institute also will conduct focus groups with disabled voters, voting officials and activists to get their feedback on the three machines.

Barnes said he was only mildly surprised by the turnout Monday.

"Ask people what they really think, and give them a legitimate voice in the process, and they will turn out," Barnes said. "We had people who had limited literacy skills and visual impairments. They asked for help with the questionnaires. They really wanted their votes counted."

Some visitors came with a healthy dose of skepticism, wondering if the new machines could be rigged.

Demonstrations will continue this week: 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. today at Eastern Connecticut State University, 83 N. Windham Road, Windham; 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Jewish Community Center of Greater New Haven, 360 Amity Road, Woodbridge; 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday at Bridgeport City Hall; and 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday at Southbury Town Hall.