e-vote glitch

[Dan Scanlan <dscanlan@xxxxxxx>]

Wrong Time for an E-Vote Glitch

 www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,64569,00.html

(Wired News, Aug. 12) -- It was simultaneously an uh-oh moment and an
ah-ha moment.

       When Sequoia Voting Systems demonstrated its new paper-trail
electronic voting system for state Senate staffers in California last
week, the company representative got a surprise when the paper trail
failed to record votes that testers cast on the machine.

       That was bad news for the voting company, whose paper-trail,
touch-screen machine will be used for the first time next month in
Nevada's state primary. The company advertises that its touch-screen
machines provide "nothing less than 100 percent accuracy."

       It was good news, however, for computer scientists and voting
activists, who have long held that touch-screen machines are
unreliable and vulnerable to tampering, and therefore must provide a
physical paper-based audit trail of votes.

       "It goes to our point that a paper trail is very much needed
to (ensure) that the machine accurately reports what people press,"
said Susie Swatt, chief of staff for state Sen. Ross Johnson
(R-Irvine), who witnessed the glitch in the Sequoia machine.

       With a paper-trail system, the voting machines would print
out a record when voters cast ballots on a touch-screen machine.
Voters could examine, but not touch, the record before casting their
ballot. The paper would then drop into a secure ballot box for use in
a recount.

       For nearly a year, voting companies and many election
officials have resisted the call for a paper record. Election
officials say that putting printers on voting machines would create
problems for poll workers if the printers break down or run out of
paper, and the paper records will cause long poll lines with voters
taking more time to check the record.

       Voting activists maintain, however, that election officials
don't want the paper trail because it opens the way for recounts and
lawsuits if paper records don't match digital vote tallies. And they
say that paper records would provide proof the machines are not as
accurate as companies claim.

       Acting on public pressure for a paper trail, Sequoia became
the first of the four largest voting companies to add printers to
their voting machines earlier this year. Two smaller voting companies
have had paper-trail machines for longer, but have had trouble
selling the machines to election officials.

       During the demonstration of the Sequoia machine last week,
the machine worked fine when the company tested votes using an
English-language ballot. But when the testers switched to a
Spanish-language ballot, the paper trail showed no votes cast for two
propositions.

       "We did it again and the same thing happened," said Darren
Chesin, a consultant to the state Senate elections and
reapportionment committee. "The problem was not with the paper trail.
The paper trail worked flawlessly, but it caught a mistake in the
programming of the touch-screen machine itself. For some reason it
would not record or display the votes on the Spanish ballot for these
two ballot measures. The only reason we even caught it was because we
were looking at the paper trail to verify it."

       Sequoia spokesman Alfie Charles said the problem was not a
programming error but a ballot-design error.

       "It was our fault for not proofing the Spanish language
ballot before demonstrating it," Charles said. "We had a demo ballot
that we designed in a hurry that didn't include all of the files that
we needed to have the machine present all of the voter's selections
on the screen and the printed ballots. That would never happen in an
election environment because of all the proofing that election
officials do."

       Charles said the machine did record the votes accurately in
its memory, but failed to record them on the paper trail and on the
review screen that voters examine before casting their ballot. Swatt
and Chesin could not confirm this, however, because the company did
not show them evidence of the digital votes stored on the machine's
internal memory.

       "We've been saying all along that these things are subject to
glitches," Chesin said. "The bottom line is that the paper trail
caught the mistake. Ergo, paper trails are a good idea."

       Charles agreed the paper trail worked exactly as it was
supposed to work. "If this happened in an election, the first voter
would see it and could call a pollworker. They would take the machine
out of service if they saw a problem," he said.

       Ironically, just one week after the demonstration occurred,
California took one step back from making sure voters in the state
will have the reassurance that a paper trail provides.

       On Thursday, a Senate bill that would require a
voter-verified paper trail on all electronic voting machines in the
state by January 2006 suffered a setback when the Assembly
Appropriations Committee, where the bill resided, decided not to push
the bill forward during this legislative session, which ends Aug. 31.
This means legislators will have to reintroduce a new bill next
January when they reconvene.

       The bill, introduced by Johnson and state Senator Don Perata
(D-Oakland), had bipartisan support and the backing of Secretary of
State Kevin Shelley.

       "I'm a little mystified why the committee has stalled the
bill," Swatt said. "E-voting machines, like them or not, are here to
stay in California. It is clear that, if we are going to be living
with e-voting machines, the only way to protect voters and to ensure
that their votes are counted accurately is to have a paper trail."

       Swatt said she hoped the public would pressure the
legislature to push the bill forward before the session ends.