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It's been four weeks since a judge said the
secretary of state had done an "abysmal" job of certifying the
security of the state's voting system and ordered emergency measures to try
to ensure the integrity of the voting process.
That's 19 business days for clerks in all 64
Colorado counties to install video surveillance of voting machines, run
background checks on anyone charged with transporting the equipment, put
numbered security seals on all machines, provide climate-controlled storage
and fulfill the rest of the judge's requirements before early voting begins.
Larimer County Clerk and Recorder Scott
Doyle has called it "craziness."
He said the increased security measures
could cost taxpayers $300,000 to $400,000, and "I felt very secure in
what our processes were before."
Alton Dillard, spokesman for the Denver
Election Commission, said the new requirements are expected to cost Denver about $120,000.
"We didn't go from no security to
security," he said. "But this was one of those occurrences where
there wasn't an option. It was a court order."
While county clerks and the besieged
Secretary of State Gigi Dennis have tried to reassure voters that the systems
always have been secure, the eight-page findings of fact and conclusions of
law released last week by Denver District Judge Lawrence Manzanares paint a
picture of a flawed patchwork system, vulnerable to manipulation and
suffering from lax oversight by the secretary of state.
"The court concludes that the secretary
has not established minimum security" as required by state statute
"and did not adequately test" the electronic voting machines,
Manzanares wrote. The secretary's office "did not carefully evaluate the
county security plans and in some cases approved plans that do not
substantially comply with the minimum requirements" of the law.
The judge's stinging criticism was
particularly worrisome in light of the testimony that computer scientists
from Prince ton University hacked into a voting machine made by Diebold
Election Systems Inc. and reprogrammed it in one minute.
Diebold is one of four companies providing voting
machines in Colorado.
Not just incidentally, it's also the company
that was represented by lobbyist and convicted felon Jack Abramoff while the
House Government Operations Committee was establishing rules for electronic
voting systems. And that committee was chaired by Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio, another
convicted felon.
The whole spectacle - along with the close
presidential elections in 2000 and 2004 - has fueled the imaginations of
Internet conspiracy theorists for years.
So it's no wonder that requests for absentee
ballots are pouring into elections offices across Colorado this fall.
Dillard said Denver has processed about 55,000 requests,
and they continue to arrive at a rate of about 1,000 a day. Doyle said 46,000
of the 151,000 active registered voters in Larimer County
also have requested absentee ballots so far.
Myriah Conroy, the lead plaintiff in the
complaint against the secretary of state, said the issue of electronic voting
machine security is far from resolved. Time constraints limited what could be
accomplished before Nov. 7, but it's not enough.
"The judge almost went so far as to
decertify the system for future elections," she said. "A lot more
needs to be done."
Paul Hultin, the attorney with Wheeler Trigg
Kennedy who handled the voter security complaint pro bono, said, "This
is just the beginning."
The plaintiffs fully intend to pressure
whoever is elected to be the next secretary of state to develop a secure
voting system for all future elections.
"If we're going to have a democracy
we're proud of, we need more people to vote and we need them to have trust
and confidence in the voting process," Hultin said. "People feel
passionately about it."
With good reason.
If the U.S. is willing to sacrifice life
and limb for the cause of democracy abroad, the least it can do is find the
money to keep it from becoming a laughingstock at home.
Diane Carman's
column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at
303-954-1489 or dcarman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.
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