Official tells about voting glitch   (NJ)

Kirk Moore  TOMS RIVER BUREAU  Asbury Park Press  May 28, 2008

TOMS RIVER — A 2006 election night computer bug that switched 72 votes for U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., from Barnegat to Lakewood was caused by reporting software in Ocean County's election system, though officials for the county Board of Elections never did learn exactly why the malfunction happened, a former executive supervisor for the board testified Wednesday in court.

"The (voting) machines and the tapes that printed out were correct," recalled Robert Giles, who left the county post in April to become director of the state Division of Elections. "Only in the reporting software, the 72 votes went to Lakewood."

That malfunction ultimately led former Barnegat Township Committee candidate Rose Jackson and Waretown activist Michele Rosen to file a lawsuit alleging the Board of Elections operates in ways that effectively deprive county residents of their constitutional right to vote. Giles testified on the second day of a nonjury trial presided over by Superior Court Judge Edward M. Oles.

Today, election board chairman and county Republi-can party chief George R. Gilmore could take the stand and talk about how the board handled the discovery of wayward votes and the subsequent recheck of ballot totals.

Earlier this year, Oles dismissed part of the Jackson-Rosen complaint that challenged the county's use of Sequoia Voting Systems electronic machines, which were used in Barnegat on Nov. 7, 2006, when the errant votes showed up on totals from Lakewood. Oles ruled those issues would be decided by another ongoing challenge in Mercer County that could have statewide implications for digital voting devices.

Still, much of Rosen's questioning of Giles on the witness stand revolved around the Sequoia machines and how the Board of Elections handles them.

Rosen questioned Giles about security measures for keeping the machines and voting results safe, a system she has described as insufficient. Rosen pursued that line of inquiry over objections from Deputy Attorney General Andrew Walko, who represents the election board. Walko said there was no allegation of machine tampering.

After Giles described how machines are delivered to local polling places up to 10 days before an election, Rosen asked, "Is there a chain of custody?"

"There isn't a specific person who signs for the machines," Giles replied.

It would be difficult to tamper with them, he added. Each machine has numbered seals, tamper-evident tape on joints and security screws that require special drive heads to remove.

"You'd need more than a screwdriver," Giles said. "Unless you have the seal numbers, the security screw heads, the security screw caps . . . I don't see how just anyone from the public could do it."

In other testimony, board Commissioner Alfonso L. Santoro doggedly testified as Rosen questioned why he and other part-time commissioners are not more intimately involved with legal and technical details of the board's work.

"We do not run the everyday operation," said Santoro, a Democratic party official who has been involved with the elections board for 31 years. "If there's any problem, we will address it."

Early in the day, Rose Jackson was finishing her testimony when she posed a question to Oles. Is not the Board of Elections liable for violating the state's Title 19 statute and its election laws, Jackson asked, even if it was done unintentionally?

That question of intent is key to the entire case, Oles replied: "There is a distinction. There has to be an intent to violate constitutional rights. . . . There is a distinction under the law."