High-Tech Voting System Is Banned in California

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

From: dave () farber net


High-Tech Voting System Is Banned in California

May 1, 2004
 By JOHN SCHWARTZ





California has banned the use of more than 14,000
electronic voting machines made by Diebold Inc. in the
November election because of security and reliability
concerns, Kevin Shelley, the California secretary of state,
announced yesterday. He also declared 28,000 other
touch-screen voting machines in the state conditionally
"decertified" until steps are taken to upgrade their
security.

Mr. Shelley said that he was recommending that the state's
attorney general look into possible civil and criminal
charges against Diebold because of what he called
"fraudulent actions by Diebold."

In an interview, Mr. Shelley said that "their performance,
their behavior, is despicable," and that "if that's the
kind of deceitful behavior they're going to engage in, they
can't do business in California."

The move is the first decertification of touch-screen
voting machines, which have appeared by the tens of
thousands across the nation as states scramble to upgrade
their election technology.

Opponents of the high-tech systems argue that the systems
are less secure than what they replace, making it possible
for the electoral process to be hacked.

Without a paper trail, created at the time of the voting,
to show the votes, they argue, electoral flaws or fraud
could go undetected and recounts could be impossible.

In a statement, Diebold's director of marketing for
election systems, Mark G. Radke, said, "We have confidence
in our technology and its benefits, and we look forward to
helping administer successful elections in California and
elsewhere in the country in November." The statement also
said that the company "disputes the secretary of state's
accusations."

Mr. Shelley's decision comes after more than a week of
furor in California over glitches that plagued the Super
Tuesday primary elections in March in several counties.

Mr. Shelley has said Diebold's missteps "jeopardized the
outcome" of the primary, in part because thousands of San
Diego voters were turned away from polling places when
Diebold equipment malfunctioned.

At public hearings about the voting problems, Robert J.
Urosevich, president of Diebold Election Systems, said in
the company's defense, "We're not idiots, though we may act
from time to time as not the smartest."

A report issued by Mr. Shelley's office on April 20 accused
the company of breaking state election law by installing
uncertified software on machines in four counties. It said
that Diebold installed systems that were not tested at the
federal level or certified at the state level, and that
Diebold lied to state officials about the machines.

It is those machines, known as the AccuVote TSX, that have
been banned from use in November.

The four counties that currently use the TSX machines, San
Diego, San Joaquin, Solano and Kern, would switch to an
older technology, known as optical ballot scanning, in
which voters mark ballots by hand and the ballots are then
fed into a reader.

Mr. Shelley followed the advice of a state advisory
committee that recommended that the 10 counties that use
touch-screen machines, should be able to use them in
November as long as they also provide paper ballots for
voters who are wary of the electronic ballot.

The committee, known as the Voting Systems and Procedures
Panel, also recommended that no new touch-screen voting
machines be used in the November election unless they
include a paper verification process.

If the counties do not provide the paper ballot alternative
and meet more than 20 other conditions for upgrading
security and reliability of the machines, those
touch-screen systems will also be banned in the November
election.

"I came real close - real close - to decertifying the
machines outright in those 10 counties," Mr. Shelley said.
But he explained that he made the decertification
conditional because the machines had strong support from
advocates for the disabled.

He said that the goal was to "balance trying to make this
election work in those 10 counties with improving voter
confidence."

Mr. Shelley had to make his announcement yesterday to meet
a deadline requiring that changes to election procedures be
made six months before an election. He has called for all
electronic voting machines in the state to produce a paper
receipt that can be viewed by voters to verify their
choices by 2006; he said he was exploring ways to speed up
that process.

Opposition to high-tech voting systems has been building,
with a number of groups having formed around the issue.

A voters group in Maryland, the Campaign for Verifiable
Voting, filed suit against the Maryland Board of Elections
last week to block the use of the state's 16,000
touch-screen machines until paper-based verification
systems that display each vote can be added to them.

Federal lawmakers, including Representative Rush D. Holt,
Democrat of New Jersey, and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton,
Democrat of New York, have called for voter-verified paper
trails as well.

"Once again, California is setting an excellent example for
the rest of the country," said David L. Dill, a computer
science professor at Stanford University and founder of a
group, VerifiedVoting.org, that is pushing for paper backup
for electronic voting systems.

"Diebold earned this," he said.

Michael Wertheimer, a
former official of the National Security Agency who tested
Diebold machines at the request of the State of Maryland
and found that the election systems could be easily hacked,
said that the harsh action by the State of California was
appropriate and that the problems with the machines could
be addressed.

"They're absolutely fixable problems," said Mr. Wertheimer,
but "the time for mea culpas are behind for all of these
companies. They have to get out front and say, `We are
going to make these systems secure.' "

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/01/national/01VOTE.html?ex=1084418045&ei=1&en=2f67724e364c35aa

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