Santa Fe County chooses new voting machines  
By Julie Ann Grimm | The New Mexican
December 6, 2005

Despite an 11th-hour protest from people who question the security and effectiveness of new electronic voting machines, Santa Fe County Clerk Valerie Espinoza has ordered touch-screen voting machines to comply with a federal mandate.

New Mexico Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron gave the state's 33 county clerks until today to decide which of three state-approved machines they prefer. Espinoza said Monday that she told the secretary's office last week to order touch-screen machines called Sequoia Edge.

Espinoza requested 56 of the machines, one for each county polling place, as required by the federal Help America Vote Act, she said.

The machines aimed at creating equal voting rights for disabled voters and those who do not speak English are at the center of controversy still swirling from the 2004 general election.

Lowell Finley, a California lawyer who successfully sued voting-machine manufacturer Diebold, has teamed up with Albuquerque attorney John Boyd in a lawsuit against the secretary of state on behalf of eight New Mexico voters who say the Sequoia Edge touch-screen machines malfunctioned in Bernalillo County and other counties in New Mexico.

The lawsuit, currently in discovery in the state's 2nd Judicial District Court, also seeks to prohibit the state from using Sequoia's touch-screen machines again.

Holly Jacobson, a former Santa Fe resident who is working on the case, said electronic voting machines amount to ``faith-based voting'' because voters can't see whether their votes are cast as intended.

For the reasons cited in the lawsuit and others, voters such as Charlie Stern wanted the Santa Fe County clerk to forgo using those machines and instead choose AutoMARK, another voting system certified by the state's Voting Machine Committee.

Stern, a member of the Voter Verified NM steering committee, had an appointment to meet with Espinoza on Monday afternoon to discuss the concerns of the group that formed after the 2004 election.

But when he invited more than a dozen others to join him and notified the press, the clerk canceled the appointment.

``We're concerned citizens who simply wanted to meet with our county clerk and deliver a letter outlining our views on voting systems for the disabled,'' he said. Stern said he does not believe the touch-screen machines are reliable and said disabled people have ed the AutoMARK as a top choice.

Espinoza disputes that claim, however. She said the AutoMARK machines, which allow the user to vote using a variety of input devices, including touch-screens and sip-and-puff mechanisms, are unsteady and not private.

AutoMARK creates a mark on a paper ballot that is then fed through an optical scanner, but the other machines don't do that. The clerk says that adds up to ``too many devices'' that make voting ``too complex.''

A work group formed to review voting machines for accessibility did not rate any machine above the other.

The group, formed of members of several disability-advocacy groups, tested all three state-certified systems and felt comfortable with them, according to Greg Trapp, executive director of the New Mexico Commission for the Blind.

``In the assessment of the group, all three machines did meet the access requirements of people with disabilities,'' Trapp said.

``We fully support the secretary of state in her decision to leave the final decision to the county clerks.''

Records at the state Bureau of Elections indicated another claim made by Verified Voting NM was incorrect.

A Monday morning news release from the group said clerks in Dona Ana, Taos and San Miguel counties have already chosen the AutoMARK system.

Ernest Ortega, a spokesman for the secretary of state, said none of those counties had notified the secretary of a decision as of Monday afternoon.

Dona Ana County Elections Chief Mari Langford-Pavao, who administers elections for the Las Cruces-area county, said the report is completely incorrect.''

The county planned a late meeting Monday to choose the machine it would use to comply with HAVA, Langford-Pavao said.

The secretary of state is still negotiating with vendors on the price of the machines, which will vary according to how many the state orders, said Ortega. Vigil-Giron expects to order about 1,460 machines.

More than 60 percent of Santa Fe County voters used paper ballots in the 2004 election because they voted early or absentee.

A new state law calls for all counties to have a ``voter verified and audible paper trail'' for all voters by 2007, which will require the county to stop using electronic machines it has had since the 1990s.

Espinoza said the new machines she ordered for disabled voters can be retrofitted to comply with the state law before the deadline.