http://www.examiner.com/a-833886~Hands_may_replace_digits_in_November_vote_count.html
Local
California secretary of state refused to certify San
Francisco’s choice for an electronic-voting system.
Bonnie Eslinger, The Examiner
2007-07-18
SAN FRANCISCO -
San Francisco’s electronic-voting machines still have not
been certified by the state, leaving city officials no other choice but to
prepare for a possible hand count of The City’s expected 3 million-plus votes
in November.
In May, Secretary of State Debra Bowen — who oversees
elections — sent a letter to Election Systems and Software, the provider of The
City’s electonic voting machines, saying she would not grant an extension on
the certification for San Francisco’s voting system as the company had
requested.
ES&S subsequently submitted an updated version of the
voting software June 25 that it expects will be certified for the February 2008
primary election, according to company spokeswoman Jill Friedman-Wilson. In the
meantime, the company is under the impression that the state will allow it to
once again use the older system, she said.
However, the former secretary of state told ES&S in
September 2006 that the system would not be administratively certified, said
Nicole Winger, spokeswoman for Bowen.
“Nevertheless, in April, ES&S ignored the prior warnings
and asked Secretary Bowen for a fourth ‘one-time’ administrative certification
of their seriously flawed system,” Winger wrote in an e-mail. “Of course,
Secretary Bowen declined.”
The state is working to create a contingency plan for San
Francisco, said Winger, who added that she couldn’t discuss any of the
alternate ideas for counting ballots at this time.
San Francisco is preparing itself for the possibility that
ballots will need to be hand-counted, according to a June 28 memo that John
Arntz, the director of elections, sent to Mayor Gavin Newsom and the Board of
Supervisors.
Arntz was not available for comment Tuesday, but told The
Examiner in May that the cost to count all the ballots, based on an estimate
determined in 2004 when The City faced a similar problem, would be roughly $1
million — and it could take as long as a month. State law allows counties 28
days to complete their accounting of ballots.
In his June letter to city officials, Arntz said it would
take an estimated 400 people to conduct a manual count of a citywide election —
which the department predicts will bring in 208,000 voters. Since each voter is
expected to cast as many as 15 votes, between measures and contests for elected
officials, election workers would have to tally more than 3 million votes, he
said.
The concerns about possible handcounting could have been
avoided, because The City had other options, said Newsom, who added that he was
“utterly perplexed” by a January decision by the Board of Supervisors not to
approve a $12.6 million, four-year contract for a new electronic-voting system
with a different company.
The contract was never approved due to the high cost, the
potential for the equipment to become obsolete and concerns that the deal —
with Oakland-based Sequoia Voting Systems — didn’t provide public access to the
source codes, the system of computer programming, Supervisor Chris Daly told
The Examiner in May. Daly was at the time chairman of the Board’s Budget and
Finance Committee.
beslinger@examiner.com