http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/073005F.shtml
E-Voting Machines Rejected
By Ian Hoffman
Inside Bay Area
Friday 29 July 2005
State says Diebold failures in massive mock election could
translate to problems at polls.
After possibly the most extensive testing ever on a voting
system, California has rejected Diebold's flagship electronic voting machine
because of printer jams and screen freezes, sending local elections officials
scrambling for other means of voting.
"There was a failure rate of about 10 percent, and
that's not good enough for the voters of California and not good enough for
me," Secretary of State Bruce McPherson said.
If the machines had been used in an election, the result
could have been frustration for poll workers and long lines for thousands of
voters, elections officials and voter advocates said Thursday.
"We certainly can't take any kind of risk like that
with this kind of device on California voters," McPherson said.
Rejection of the TSx by California, the nation's largest
voting-system market, could influence local elections officials from Utah,
Mississippi and Ohio, home of Diebold corporate headquarters, where dozens of
counties are poised to purchase the latest Diebold touch screens. State elections
officials in Ohio say they still have confidence in the machines.
But McPherson's decision did send California counties from
San Diego to Alameda to Humboldt hunting for potential alternatives to their
plans to use the TSx.
By January 2006, every polling place nationwide must offer
at least one handicapped-accessible voting machine - touch screens are one
example - and all California touch screens must offer a countable paper record
so voters and election officials can verify the accuracy of electronic votes.
So far, no voting system has been state approved that meets both requirements.
"This is a muddle because there is no certified system
right now," said Elaine Ginnold, acting registrar of voters in Alameda
County. "We have to look at all of the non-options."
McPherson denied approval of the TSx after a series of
failed tests, culminating in a massive, mock election conducted on 96 of the
machines in a San Joaquin County warehouse. San Joaquin is one of three
California counties that purchased a total of 13,000 TSx machines in 2003 for
more than $40 million and have paid to warehouse them ever since.
For eight hours July 20, four dozen local elections
officials and contractors stood at tables and tapped votes into the machines to
replicate a California primary, one of the most complex elections in the
nation. State officials watched as paper jams cropped up 10 times, and several
machines froze up, requiring a full reboot for voting to continue.
Diebold Election Systems Inc. plans to fix the problems and
reapply for California's approval within 30 days, company spokesman David Bear
said.
"They had 10,000 ballots and 10 paper jams. Obviously
that needs to be looked at and addressed, and it will be," he said.
"But it needs to be put into perspective."
Elections officials and voting activists said they had never
heard of more extensive testing for a single voting system, outside of an
actual election. Kim Alexander, president of the Davis-based California Voter
Foundation, said McPherson deserves credit for ordering rigorous testing.
"It's the first ever conducted in the state and, to my
knowledge, in the country that simulated a real-world experience with these
machines in a voting booth," she said.
Ordinarily, states and the National Association of State
Elections Directors approve voting systems after labs hired by the
manufacturers perform tests on a handful of machines. The Diebold TSx managed
to get through those tests - twice. But none of the testing standards addresses
printers on electronic voting machines, even though more than 20 states either
require a so-called paper trail or are debating such a requirement.
For years, voters have reported frozen screens and other
glitches in the polling place.
"It's always been the voters' word against election
officials' and the vendors'," Alexander said. "Now we have real proof
right before the eyes of state elections officials."
Reliable voting equipment has been a problem before for
Diebold in California. In the weeks before the March 2004 presidential primary,
the firm rushed a new device called a voter-card encoder through assembly,
testing and temporary state approval. Hundreds of the devices broke down on
Election Day. Without the devices, thousands of voters in two of California's
largest counties, San Diego and Alameda, could not vote on Diebold's touch
screens. Lines developed, and hundreds walked away without voting.
California withdrew approval for some Diebold voting
systems, and company stock sagged. Elections experts said McPherson's decision
probably saved the company from a repeat.
"Diebold for some is sort of teetering on the
public-relations edge, and so something like this, with 10 percent of the
voters potentially affected, that would be a pretty big PR issue for
Diebold," said Sean Greene, research director for Electionline.org, a
nonpartisan voting-reform clearinghouse.
In the Bay Area, Alameda and San Joaquin counties had
planned to use all TSx machines in the 2006 elections, and Marin County planned
to put at least one machine in each of its polling places.
© 2005 ANG Newspapers
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