Info on voting flaws not shared
By M.C. MOEWE, Daytona Beach News Journal Online, November 12, 2007

While only a handful of companies make voting machines used in the United States, there is no nationwide system that enables election supervisors to share information about the devices such as machine failures and studies outlining security concerns.

Though established in 2004, the federal agency required by law to act as a clearinghouse on voting system problems the U.S. Election Assistance Commission has been slow to develop a a place where such information can be shared.

The supervisors are largely left on their own, dealing directly with voting machine manufacturers to resolve problems such as the one encountered in Volusia County with Diebold Inc.'s Premier Election Solutions optical scan machines.

A Diebold spokesman said this month that Volusia's high memory card failure rate stems from a problem that has developed with some of its 25,000 optical scan readers nationwide. Memory cards are the electronic media the machine uses to store votes.

An example of a typical memory card failure happened during Tuesday's election when 167 ballots cast at the City Island early voting precinct were lost from a memory card causing the staff to spend about an hour feeding those ballots into the optical scan machine again with a newly programmed memory card.

A similar memory card failure happened in 2000 but a poll worker didn't realize some 300 ballots needed to be fed through the machine again. The mistake was discovered after the close presidential race forced a hand count.

Officials with the Election Assistance Commission said it would not disseminate the information about the 25,000 optical scan machines unless an official agency such as a state or county requested the action.

Commission officials say one problem is that the agency lacks authority to force local election offices and states to report problems.

On Thursday, the commission's Web site linked to California's review of voting machines used there that outlines security problems with some of the machines.

Secretary of state spokespersons from Florida and California two states that have commissioned extensive reviews on voting systems said the reports produced by their states have been posted on their Web sites for several months.

Jeannie Layson, a spokeswoman with the Election Assistance Commission, said Florida had already submitted a voting system review, but has been asked to resubmit it under the commission's new clearinghouse policies.

In 2005 the U.S. Government Accountability Office report urged the Commission to create an information sharing system.

"The continued absence of a national clearinghouse for voting system problems means that segments of the election community may continue to acquire and operate their systems without the benefit of critical information learned by others regarding the security and reliability of those systems," the report states.

Meanwhile state and local election officials are left to find out about problems encountered with their voting systems through media reports or Web sites such as votersunite.org that chronicle voting machine problems.

Nicole Winger, a spokeswoman for California's Secretary of State, said that's how state election officials there found out about the connector problem.

"A memory card problem has the potential for a lot of votes to be lost," Winger said. "Secretary (of State Debra) Bowen is helping our counties get to the bottom of this."

Diebold's election division spokesman said the company would begin inspecting the "J40 connector" on Florida's 2,693 optical scan machines in January. The connector can become damaged, causing memory cards to fail, purging machines of votes and requiring the votes to be fed into the machine again.

Memory card failures have been a problem in Volusia County elections for years.

Diebold officials have said Volusia's problem were an anomaly specific to the county but a Daytona Beach News-Journal public records request to responses by counties to a Diebold survey asking about memory card failures showed Volusia was not unusual. The responses showed other counties had similar problems with memory card failures.

Diebold officials refused to release the results of the study, calling it "proprietary business information."

Donetta Davidson, a commissioner with the Election Assistance Commission, said her agency could let supervisors know about the connector problem if a reliable source would give them the information.

"If the manufacturer sends us a letter we will put up a letter," Davidson said.