Split vote on electronic tally

Conference reveals stark division on computer systems' reliability

Monday, December 15, 2003

BY KEVIN COUGHLIN
Star-Ledger Staff

GAITHERSBURG, Md. It was meant to be a peace-making summit. For two days last week, computer experts, election officials and vendors of electronic voting machines from around the country gathered here in Maryland. The conference was optimistically titled, "Building Trust and Confidence in Voting Systems."

Things started well enough. Everyone applauded a handshake between a vociferous critic of electronic voting machines and a leader of the national association that has overseen their certification.

But democracy is a messy business.

Soon the geeks were trading taunts with the blind, to cheers from their respective camps.

Election officials, eager to skip a repeat of the 2000 debacle, were left wondering how to prepare for next year's presidential election. The only certainty is that new voting machines and other reforms mean big business for manufacturers and software makers looking to cash in on $3.9 billion earmarked last year in the Help America Vote Act.

Professors from Stanford and Johns Hopkins universities predicted dire abuses of computerized voting machines; they insisted that old-fashioned paper receipts offer the best defense.

Election supervisors dismissed such warnings as "X-Files" ravings of "black helicopter people." Try asking 73-year-old poll workers to fix jammed printers, snickered an election official from Missouri.

Douglas Jones of the University of Iowa summed up the mood during a panel discussion.

"Trust no one," the computer scientist intoned.

In 2000, one in nine voters nationwide cast ballots on "direct recording electronic" machines, according to a study by the Califiornia and Massachusetts institutes of technology.

By 2010, some experts anticipate 75 percent of votes will be cast this way. The lure of HAVA money is strong; the conference drew vendors from the Netherlands and Spain.

So, which machine to buy? Ramon de la Cruz, New Jersey's director of elections, is looking to the newly appointed federal Election Assistance Commission. It will join several groups pondering changes to procedures and standards for certifying voting machines.

Questions include whether to keep exempting commercial "off-the-shelf" software from testing, to shield trade secrets, and whether states should follow California's lead by mandating printouts for voters to verify their ballots.

But answers are unlikely before next November. And while there are no proven cases of tampering, a flurry of studies has cast doubts on security of electronic voting machines.

The CEO of Diebold Inc., one of the leading vendors, performed fund-raising for President Bush, and Internet activists posted thousands of Diebold documents suggesting the company knowingly sold voting systems that did not meet certification requirements.

Maryland recently decided to buy Diebold machines after the company pledged to fix flaws found by a consultant.

Voters in Virginia's Fairfax County complained last month that electronic machines from Advanced Voting Solutions appeared to subtract votes in a close school board race.

In Indiana's Boone County, MicroVote machines initially showed 144,000 votes even though the county has fewer than 19,000 registered voters, reported the Indianapolis Star.

Electronic voting machines pose "substantially greater" risks than other systems, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service. But the report stops short of endorsing any one safeguard, urging each side of the printout controversy to "develop better understanding" of the other's views.

Even the vendors are divided. Last week, Princeton Junction's Avante International Technology Inc. and other newcomers who favor paper trails announced their own association. It hopes to counter the industry's Big Three: Diebold, Sequoia Voting Systems and Elections Systems & Software.

William Welsh of ES&S complained that these giants were shut out from discussion panels by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, host of the summit.

Welsh said "the sheer number of eyeballs" in any election makes conspiracies hard to imagine. Ted Selker of MIT said secure voting hinges as much on human factors simpler ballot design, tighter procedures at polling places as on technology.

"If I'm sophisticated enough to do the kind of hacking that we've never even documented, then I'm sophisticated enough to get around a paper-verified paper trail," said Selker.

But a group called WheresThePaper.org showed a program that secretly switches votes. Patrick Curran of Sun Microsystems called voluntary standards "fuzzy." No tools can screen for the "hundreds of ways" voting software can be rigged, said Stanford's David Dill. A sneaky write-in vote, for example, might trigger deliberate malfunctions.

"If we fully computerize our elections, it will be the first time communities will not be in charge of their elections. They will turn them over to vendors and programmers," said Rebecca Mercuri, a Harvard fellow and former Lawrence Township committeewoman.

Jim Dickson, a blind executive for the American Association of People With Disabilities, hotly denounced such claims as a "red herring."

"These machines are better than any other system currently available," Dickson said. "We cannot wait for 'perfect' when the system is broken now."

Wendy Noren, an election official from Columbia, Mo., said paper receipts would confound her poll workers, whose average age is 73.

"Have you ever seen a printer jam?" Noren said.

Linda Lamone of the Maryland State Board of Elections shuddered at the prospect of retrofitting 16,000 Diebold machines for a 13-hour election.

"That's asking a lot of a printer that's probably $150," Lamone said.

Thousands of voters in Alameda County, Calif., voted last month on Diebold machines that state officials said were not certified. But the state concluded the machines functioned properly.

Elaine Ginnold, the county's assistant registrar of voters, described Diebold critics as "black helicopter people" conspiracy buffs.

"We love them," Ginnold said of the machines.

For New Jersey's de la Cruz, the search for answers goes on.

"This ain't over by a long shot," he said.