High-Tech Voting System Is Banned in California

["Paul Tiger" <paul.tiger@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

May 1, 2004
High-Tech Voting System Is Banned in California
By JOHN SCHWARTZ for the New York Times

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.' "