Camera article on voting

[Paul Walmsley <paul@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Camera ran this article today, covering election prep issues and
sample-batch counting:

http://www.dailycamera.com/bdc/election/article/0,1713,BDC_16316_3085882,00.html

Just for the record: the Camera misidentified me as a "spokesman for CVV."  
despite the fact that I never identified myself as that when speaking with
the Camera reporter, and in fact explicitly stated that CVV hasn't met in
months, and that my opinions on a sample hand-count audit were personal
ones (as opposed to group consensus).  So I don't know where they got that
from.  I certainly don't want to present my personal opinions on this
issue as something that CVV hasn't agreed upon, when CVV hasn't met to
discuss it.

Also, on the issue of voter identification: my personal sense - which I
probably did not communicate very clearly to the Camera reporter - is not
that ballot identification is impossible.  It's that the added
hand-counting report causes no additional risk of voter identification, 
above and beyond the existing risk of having the sequence number printed 
on the ballot.


- Paul


New voting machines do well in early tests

But election watchdogs still want more safeguards

By Ryan Morgan, Camera Staff Writer
August 4, 2004

As early voting for the primary gets under way this week, voters and 
election judges are slowly adjusting to the new electronic voting machines 
the county purchased this summer, election officials say.

So far, the county has had to contend with minor glitches, but nothing 
serious, said Tom Halicki, Boulder County's elections manager.

The new equipment, provided by Lafayette-based Hart InterCivic, is being 
run through its paces both in the voting booth and at election 
headquarters, where Halicki and others have been practicing for the big 
day in November.

Election workers staged a mock election last week using 3,200 ballots with 
fake candidate names and ran them through the machines. They deliberately 
"over-voted" -- that is, voted for the two candidates in the same race, 
for example, and under-voted to make sure the system would catch those 
errors.

Simulating a county-wide election that included all of the cities in 
Boulder County was time-consuming and complicated, Halicki said, and the 
process didn't run as smoothly as it would have on the voting machines' 
showroom floor.

"It's a bit more complicated than what you would see if you just went and 
saw the demo," he said.

But the system worked, he said.

The transition from an old-fashioned voting system to computer-age 
technology is giving some election workers problems, too. Some voters 
trying to get their ballots printed have had to wait for a while as 
workers grapple with the technology, Halicki said.

"We have some election judges who might not necessarily be comfortable 
with computers," he said.

But workers are slowly becoming more familiar with the system, he said.

A watchdog group called Citizens for Verifiable Voting, meanwhile, is 
trying to get election officials to conduct a security check to make sure 
ballots are being correctly read and are tamper-proof.

Paul Walmsley, a spokesman for the group, wants the county to double-check 
1 percent of its ballots during the election to make sure the computer is 
counting the ballots in the way the voter intends.

"I'd like to see the county pick random samples of ballots and compare the 
way that the computer tabulates those ballots with the way that a human 
would," Walmsley said.

But Halicki and Hart InterCivic are wary of implementing that option 
because it could lead to fears that election officials could match voters 
to their ballots -- thereby violating the secret ballot, Halicki said.

The current system is set up to make that impossible, Halicki said. But 
the perception itself is dangerous enough that election officials want to 
stay away from that option.

Walmsley said erroneous fears shouldn't be allowed to veto a valid and 
potentially valuable safeguard.

"That's really a matter of perception," he said. "It's not a matter of 
reality."

Halicki said the county is still considering the matter. But as a 
compromise, election officials have invited Walmsley and other CVV members 
in to examine computer-generated tallies from the mock election with the 
mock ballots.

Contact Camera Staff Writer Ryan Morgan at (303) 473-1333 or 
morganr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx