Yesterday Alameda County's Board of Supervisors voted 4-0 to approve Interim Registrar of Voters Elaine Ginnold's plan to move from all-electronic voting to a "blended" system that relies more heavily on paper ballots. Ginnold's plan also would open up the bidding for this blended system to all vendors and not just Diebold.
Meanwhile, in San Joaquin County, Registrar of Voters Deborah Hench told the Tri-Valley Herald that she is planning to stick with Diebold's TSx machines, which at present are sitting in a county warehouse and cannot be used until they are certified and produce a voter-verified paper audit trail. Excerpts from reporter Les Mahler's article are featured below.
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San Joaquin County is going to stay with the Diebold Inc. touch-screen voting system and let the company iron out its problems, said the county's registrar of voters, Deborah Hench.
"The state is willing to retest them at any time," she said.
During a test in July, the secretary of state determined there were problems with the Diebold system. Hench said the problems — paper jams and screens freezing up during the voting tests — weren't as bad as reported.
During the July test, about nine of 96 machines had paper jams, and 21 screens froze, she said.
Kim Alexander, president of California Voter Foundation in Davis, said Hench is using the same math that Diebold is using.
"The secretary of state was looking at the performance of all 96 machines," she said. "The truth is that none of them worked flawlessly."
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Hench said then that despite minor problems, the Diebold Inc. system worked fine in San Joaquin County.
She said the problem with July's tests was that there were no standards or guidelines for failure for Diebold to use in testing the machines. "The tests show that we would have paper jams," she said. "Is that fair to Diebold?"
She noted that in the July tests all the ballots were accounted for and could be read.
Also, the failure problems didn't surface until the next day when the tapes were analyzed, she said. "We found out they failed the next day. The day of the testing, everything went fine," Hench said.
But the problem is that the machines do have a failure rate, said Nghia Nguyen, spokeswoman for the Secretary of State's office.
"If you have 96 machines, and over 20 have problems, that's not good enough for California voters," Nguyen said.
Also, Diebold couldn't explain why their machines had problems, she said.
Nguyen said the secretary of state is willing to retest the system and has given that option to Diebold. But the Ohio-based manufacturer of banking ATMs hasn't responded yet.
"The secretary of state wants to give counties as many choices as possible," Nguyen said.
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Supervisor Steve Gutierrez said the board has asked Hench for a report on the status of the Diebold touch-screen system.
"We want to know are we going to use it or not going to use it?" he asked. While the board wants feedback from Hench, he said it's up to the board to decide on whether San Joaquin County will stay with Diebold.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Mercury News editorial: Paper ballot spot check is key to election integrity
Today's San Jose Mercury News features an editorial urging Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign SB 370/Bowen. It sums up the need for this bill quite well, and is featured below.
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A paper trail, both during an election and afterward, is essential to ensure the integrity of electronic voting. A bill requiring the use of paper ballots during a post-election recount is heading toward the governor's desk. Despite the opposition of Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger should sign it.
For four decades, state law has required that poll officials after an election do a random manual recount of 1 percent of ballots cast, as a check against election malfunction and fraud. SB 370, sponsored by Sen. Debra Bowen, D-Redondo Beach, would require that the sample recounts for electronic voting be done using the paper printouts that voters now use to verify their ballots.
California is one of two dozen states that mandate a voter-verified paper trail for touch-screen machines. A dozen of those now use the paper printouts in a sample recount.
That should seem obvious, but not to most county registrars of voters and McPherson. They want to take the easier and quicker route of printing out electronic images of votes that the touch-screen software can create internally but that voters don't see.
The difference may seem an arcane point, but it's fundamental. If there is a glitch with the software, you won't know it by simply using images that mask the problem. Only the paper copies that voters verified when they voted can offer an accurate check.
The registrars protest that counting the paper slips would be cumbersome and might interfere with the requirement to do a recount within 28 days of an election -- a weak excuse. Some have continued to insist that a paper trail is unnecessary. But there have been enough breakdowns and bugs in touch-screen machines to warrant skepticism and justify the extra check that SB 370 would provide.
McPherson has another objection: The voter-verified paper slips don't conform in size, print clarity and paper weight to a legal ballot. That is true but shouldn't preclude their use. Regulations should be changed to incorporate the voter-verified receipts, and voting machine companies should be encouraged to produce a paper trail from larger, sturdier stock.
California took the lead in demanding accurate electronic voting. SB 370 is key to election accountability.
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A paper trail, both during an election and afterward, is essential to ensure the integrity of electronic voting. A bill requiring the use of paper ballots during a post-election recount is heading toward the governor's desk. Despite the opposition of Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger should sign it.
For four decades, state law has required that poll officials after an election do a random manual recount of 1 percent of ballots cast, as a check against election malfunction and fraud. SB 370, sponsored by Sen. Debra Bowen, D-Redondo Beach, would require that the sample recounts for electronic voting be done using the paper printouts that voters now use to verify their ballots.
California is one of two dozen states that mandate a voter-verified paper trail for touch-screen machines. A dozen of those now use the paper printouts in a sample recount.
That should seem obvious, but not to most county registrars of voters and McPherson. They want to take the easier and quicker route of printing out electronic images of votes that the touch-screen software can create internally but that voters don't see.
The difference may seem an arcane point, but it's fundamental. If there is a glitch with the software, you won't know it by simply using images that mask the problem. Only the paper copies that voters verified when they voted can offer an accurate check.
The registrars protest that counting the paper slips would be cumbersome and might interfere with the requirement to do a recount within 28 days of an election -- a weak excuse. Some have continued to insist that a paper trail is unnecessary. But there have been enough breakdowns and bugs in touch-screen machines to warrant skepticism and justify the extra check that SB 370 would provide.
McPherson has another objection: The voter-verified paper slips don't conform in size, print clarity and paper weight to a legal ballot. That is true but shouldn't preclude their use. Regulations should be changed to incorporate the voter-verified receipts, and voting machine companies should be encouraged to produce a paper trail from larger, sturdier stock.
California took the lead in demanding accurate electronic voting. SB 370 is key to election accountability.
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Alameda County Board of Supervisors will vote today on voting technology plans
Today the Alameda County Board of Supervisors will meet and vote on whether to endorse the Registrar of Voter's plan to move from an all-electronic voting system to a "blended" system, relying more heavily on paper ballots in the polls. The county is also going to decide whether to open the bidding for a new system to all vendors. The new plan represents a significant shift in Alameda County -- just two months ago the supervisors voted to stick with Diebold and an all-electronic voting system. The supervisors' meeting starts at 10 a.m. and this issue is item 15 on the agenda. A live audio webcast of the meeting is available online.
These developments in Alameda are welcome news. Back in June, when I addressed the Board of Supervisors I made several recommendations, including that they go with a blended system and open up their equipment procurement process to other vendors. I left that June board meeting deeply disappointed by the course of action the county chose to take. Hopefully today the board will vote to change their course and move toward greater reliance on paper voting systems, which are more transparent, affordable and secure than electronic voting machines.
These developments in Alameda are welcome news. Back in June, when I addressed the Board of Supervisors I made several recommendations, including that they go with a blended system and open up their equipment procurement process to other vendors. I left that June board meeting deeply disappointed by the course of action the county chose to take. Hopefully today the board will vote to change their course and move toward greater reliance on paper voting systems, which are more transparent, affordable and secure than electronic voting machines.
SB 370 heads to the Governor's desk
Today's Oakland Tribune features a story by Ian Hoffman on yesterday's unanimous vote in the State Senate to pass SB 370, authored by State Senator Debra Bowen, who also issued a news release about the passage of her bill. Excerpts from the Oakland Tribune article are below.
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California is on the verge of turning away from electrons and toward paper as the ultimate arbiter of democratic choice, with final passage Monday of a bill requiring the use of paper trails for recounting votes.
California already was among 26 states requiring electronic voting machines to produce a backup paper record for voters to see and confirm their electronic votes.
If the governor signs the bill, the state will join a dozen of those states where elections officials also plan to use those printouts for any automatic recount or an election challenge. California is close on the heels of New York, West Virginia and other states that passed similar laws within the last two months, according to researchers at Electionline.org, a nonpartisan clearinghouse for voting-reform information.State senators sent the bill to the governor on a lopsided 36-0 vote after scarcely any debate.
Computer scientists conceived of the paper trail as a partial safeguard against fraud and error in computerized voting.
"No voting machine is going to be 100 percent error-free, 100 percent of the time," said Debra Bowen, D-Marina Del Rey, the bill's author. "But unlike with paper, when it comes to electronic data, a small human error, a technology glitch or a tampering incident can change thousands of votes in an instant."
Her legislation would treat electronic ballots as the legal record of the vote but rely on the paper trail for California's mandatory hand count of ballots in 1 percent of precincts.
"People need and deserve to know their votes have been counted accurately, and the best way to ensure that is to make sure there's a paper printout of every electronic ballot," she said.
So far, the paper trails produced by suppliers of computerized touch-screen voting machines have been double rolls of curly, thermal paper that tend to jam on some machines.
"Boy, it's pretty clunky. And it didn't have to be this clunky," said David Wagner, an assistant professor of computer science and a voting-security scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. "The vendors could have built machines with a paper trail that was more convenient for elections officials and voters, but it didn't happen."
Local elections officials who embraced electronic voting as a way to rid themselves of paper fought the paper trail and fought its use in recounts. California's chief elections officer, Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, has opposed Bowen's bill because he says the paper rolls don't look anything like a ballot and shouldn't be treated like one.
But if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signs the bill — aides said he has made no decision — voters in counties using touch-screens could be seeing paper trails for a long time, and those little slips could become ensconced in state election law as a decider of elections.
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If a new technology for verifying votes did come along, experts on voting and elections say they doubt elections officials will have the money or desire to buy it for several years at least.
"You just see counties wanting to slide through this and get it done," said Sean Greene, Electionline.org's research director.
After the 2006 elections, he and Wagner said, voting technology is likely to settle down.
"Elections officials are not going to have the appetite to change their systems for some time," Wagner said.
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California is on the verge of turning away from electrons and toward paper as the ultimate arbiter of democratic choice, with final passage Monday of a bill requiring the use of paper trails for recounting votes.
California already was among 26 states requiring electronic voting machines to produce a backup paper record for voters to see and confirm their electronic votes.
If the governor signs the bill, the state will join a dozen of those states where elections officials also plan to use those printouts for any automatic recount or an election challenge. California is close on the heels of New York, West Virginia and other states that passed similar laws within the last two months, according to researchers at Electionline.org, a nonpartisan clearinghouse for voting-reform information.State senators sent the bill to the governor on a lopsided 36-0 vote after scarcely any debate.
Computer scientists conceived of the paper trail as a partial safeguard against fraud and error in computerized voting.
"No voting machine is going to be 100 percent error-free, 100 percent of the time," said Debra Bowen, D-Marina Del Rey, the bill's author. "But unlike with paper, when it comes to electronic data, a small human error, a technology glitch or a tampering incident can change thousands of votes in an instant."
Her legislation would treat electronic ballots as the legal record of the vote but rely on the paper trail for California's mandatory hand count of ballots in 1 percent of precincts.
"People need and deserve to know their votes have been counted accurately, and the best way to ensure that is to make sure there's a paper printout of every electronic ballot," she said.
So far, the paper trails produced by suppliers of computerized touch-screen voting machines have been double rolls of curly, thermal paper that tend to jam on some machines.
"Boy, it's pretty clunky. And it didn't have to be this clunky," said David Wagner, an assistant professor of computer science and a voting-security scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. "The vendors could have built machines with a paper trail that was more convenient for elections officials and voters, but it didn't happen."
Local elections officials who embraced electronic voting as a way to rid themselves of paper fought the paper trail and fought its use in recounts. California's chief elections officer, Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, has opposed Bowen's bill because he says the paper rolls don't look anything like a ballot and shouldn't be treated like one.
But if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signs the bill — aides said he has made no decision — voters in counties using touch-screens could be seeing paper trails for a long time, and those little slips could become ensconced in state election law as a decider of elections.
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If a new technology for verifying votes did come along, experts on voting and elections say they doubt elections officials will have the money or desire to buy it for several years at least.
"You just see counties wanting to slide through this and get it done," said Sean Greene, Electionline.org's research director.
After the 2006 elections, he and Wagner said, voting technology is likely to settle down.
"Elections officials are not going to have the appetite to change their systems for some time," Wagner said.
Monday, August 29, 2005
SB 370 passes the Senate on a unanimous vote
A few moments ago the California State Senate took up and passed SB 370 by Senator Debra Bowen, which requires that voter verified paper audit trails be used to verify the accuracy of computerized software vote counts. Bowen's bill passed unanimously in the Senate today, and also enjoyed strong bipartisan support in the Assembly, where it passed last Thursday, with nearly half of the Assembly Republican Caucus voting in favor.
This strong, bipartisan support for SB 370 will be important as the Governor considers whether to sign this bill. Secretary of State Bruce McPherson's opposition was a setback, but evidently it did not persuade a single member of the Senate to vote against SB 370 before sending the bill to the Governor.
Now the focus will turn to Governor Schwarzenegger, who has until October 9 to sign or veto SB 370. Those who wish to contact the Governor on this bill can send an electronic message using the online form at www.govmail.ca.gov or by phone, fax, or U.S. mail.
U.S. Mail:
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol Building
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: 916-445-2841
Fax: 916-445-4633
This strong, bipartisan support for SB 370 will be important as the Governor considers whether to sign this bill. Secretary of State Bruce McPherson's opposition was a setback, but evidently it did not persuade a single member of the Senate to vote against SB 370 before sending the bill to the Governor.
Now the focus will turn to Governor Schwarzenegger, who has until October 9 to sign or veto SB 370. Those who wish to contact the Governor on this bill can send an electronic message using the online form at www.govmail.ca.gov or by phone, fax, or U.S. mail.
U.S. Mail:
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol Building
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: 916-445-2841
Fax: 916-445-4633
Orange County registrar placed on leave
Last week Orange County officials placed the county's Registrar of Voters, Steve Rodermund, on administrative leave. The Los Angeles Times' story reports that it's a "personnel matter", according to County Executive Officer Thomas G. Mauk. Rodermund has been criticized recently for scheduling a special congressional election to be held on Rosh Hashanah, one of the most important holidays in the Jewish faith. However, according to the article that appeared in the Orange County Register, this was not the reason why Rodermund was placed on leave.
County officials are keeping mum as to why Rodermund has been removed from his office. As registrar, Rodermund has been responsible for steering the county's purchase of an electronic voting system from Hart, a vendor located in Texas that teamed up with the public relations firm Maximus to win the county's $26 million contract in April 2003. In the March 2004 Primary election, Orange was one of three counties in the state that experienced serious, widespread technical problems with their electronic voting systems, which led the State Legislature to hold a hearing to examine what went wrong and ultimately helped win passage of SB 1438 which mandates a voter verified paper trail for electronic ballots. Orange County is currently the only Hart client in California, and the amount of money the county may have to spend to make its Hart eSlate voting machines comply with California's new voter verified paper audit trail law could be as high as $9 million.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Deputy Registrar Neal Kelley will be running the elections department during Rodermund's absence. Rodermund did not return calls from either the LA Times or Orange County Register seeking comment.
Excerpts from the Orange County Register article are below.
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The void comes at a busy time for registrar officials planning the myriad details for two special elections in the next two months.
On Oct. 4, more than 400,000 voters will cast ballots to fill a vacancy in the 48th Congressional District. And on Nov. 8 voters will go to the polls in a special election called by the governor.
Another election could be held in early December if no candidate vying for the 48th Congressional District seat wins a majority. A win by state Sen. John Campbell in that election could trigger as many as four more elections with state assembly members moving up to run for Campbell's Senate seat.
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With so many issues to deal with, it's uncertain what prompted the action to remove Rodermund, 54, a former budget analyst and military veteran who headed the department as an interim chief for a year before being appointed in December 2003.
"I see it as a CEO tackling some issues head on and providing the adequate time to hear all sides. It doesn't necessarily mean there's any impropriety," said Supervisor Chris Norby.
The only comment made by the county spokeswoman was to a question never asked.
"It has nothing to do with the conflict of the election day with Rosh Hashanah," said Thomas Plunk.
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Excerpts from the LA Times story are below.
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His record has been marked by some controversies, most notably the March 2004 election when poll workers struggling with new voting machines gave thousands of voters incorrect access codes, causing the wrong ballots to appear on voting machines.
And in November 2004, the official results of a dozen Orange County elections were delayed more than a week because of slow counting of absentee ballots.
Assemblyman Todd Spitzer (R-Orange), who was a county supervisor when Rodermund was assigned to the office, was concerned about the timing of Rodermund's leave.
"The registrar's office has obviously been plagued by systemic problems over the years," Spitzer said, "and it seems that in every election, some fundamental issue has arisen."
Spitzer said he worried that the turmoil in the registrar's office might affect the Nov. 8 election. Among the several ballot measures to be decided is one that would allow county firefighters to share in millions of dollars in public safety funds from Proposition 172.
"The special election is very critical," Spitzer said. "If the registrar's office is not completely squared away, it could open up special challenges in the court."
County officials are keeping mum as to why Rodermund has been removed from his office. As registrar, Rodermund has been responsible for steering the county's purchase of an electronic voting system from Hart, a vendor located in Texas that teamed up with the public relations firm Maximus to win the county's $26 million contract in April 2003. In the March 2004 Primary election, Orange was one of three counties in the state that experienced serious, widespread technical problems with their electronic voting systems, which led the State Legislature to hold a hearing to examine what went wrong and ultimately helped win passage of SB 1438 which mandates a voter verified paper trail for electronic ballots. Orange County is currently the only Hart client in California, and the amount of money the county may have to spend to make its Hart eSlate voting machines comply with California's new voter verified paper audit trail law could be as high as $9 million.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Deputy Registrar Neal Kelley will be running the elections department during Rodermund's absence. Rodermund did not return calls from either the LA Times or Orange County Register seeking comment.
Excerpts from the Orange County Register article are below.
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The void comes at a busy time for registrar officials planning the myriad details for two special elections in the next two months.
On Oct. 4, more than 400,000 voters will cast ballots to fill a vacancy in the 48th Congressional District. And on Nov. 8 voters will go to the polls in a special election called by the governor.
Another election could be held in early December if no candidate vying for the 48th Congressional District seat wins a majority. A win by state Sen. John Campbell in that election could trigger as many as four more elections with state assembly members moving up to run for Campbell's Senate seat.
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With so many issues to deal with, it's uncertain what prompted the action to remove Rodermund, 54, a former budget analyst and military veteran who headed the department as an interim chief for a year before being appointed in December 2003.
"I see it as a CEO tackling some issues head on and providing the adequate time to hear all sides. It doesn't necessarily mean there's any impropriety," said Supervisor Chris Norby.
The only comment made by the county spokeswoman was to a question never asked.
"It has nothing to do with the conflict of the election day with Rosh Hashanah," said Thomas Plunk.
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Excerpts from the LA Times story are below.
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His record has been marked by some controversies, most notably the March 2004 election when poll workers struggling with new voting machines gave thousands of voters incorrect access codes, causing the wrong ballots to appear on voting machines.
And in November 2004, the official results of a dozen Orange County elections were delayed more than a week because of slow counting of absentee ballots.
Assemblyman Todd Spitzer (R-Orange), who was a county supervisor when Rodermund was assigned to the office, was concerned about the timing of Rodermund's leave.
"The registrar's office has obviously been plagued by systemic problems over the years," Spitzer said, "and it seems that in every election, some fundamental issue has arisen."
Spitzer said he worried that the turmoil in the registrar's office might affect the Nov. 8 election. Among the several ballot measures to be decided is one that would allow county firefighters to share in millions of dollars in public safety funds from Proposition 172.
"The special election is very critical," Spitzer said. "If the registrar's office is not completely squared away, it could open up special challenges in the court."
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Assembly passes SB 370; Alameda plans to go with "blended" system
This morning the Assembly passed SB 370/Bowen. The initial vote was 46-19 though the final total may change before the day is over, as Assembly Members may add on votes before today's session adjourns. Though the vote was not unanimous, it also was not partisan; insiders in the Capitol inform me that the Assembly Republican Caucus took a "support" position on this bill (caucus analyses are not available to the public).
Meanwhile, Alameda County is making plans to issue a "Request for Information" from voting equipment vendors. Alameda's course of action has changed dramatically since June, when the board had approved a plan to spend $6 million to upgrade their Diebold electronic voting machines and stick with all-electronic balloting. Now the county is planning to go instead with a "blended" system, mixing paper ballots and electronic ballots in their polling places. The county is also allowing other vendors to compete for the new contract. More details about these developments are featured in Ian Hoffman's article in today's Oakland Tribune. Excerpts are below.
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Alameda County — the first large West Coast county to gamble on Diebold Election Systems Inc. and its electronic voting machines — is weighing whether to end that experiment, going with a more paper-based voting system and perhaps another supplier.
County officials are contacting voting-system vendors this week and asking whether they can provide a so-called "blended" voting system, with a winning bidder to be chosen in November.
Alameda is headed the way of many large counties — toward a hybrid of optical scanners for paper ballots and either electronic touchscreens or computerized ballot-marking devices for handicapped voters.
If vendors can supply such a system, this November's special election will be the county's last with Diebold touchscreens as the only voting equipment in the polling place.
Diebold remains the nation's largest voting system supplier and is selling thousands of its touchscreens in Mississippi, Utah and Ohio. And the firm still may try selling Alameda County on a new system.
But the county's move away from touchscreens and toward other vendors is a blow to Diebold after a two-year string of missteps and mistakes by the firm.
County elections officials stoutly defended the company in 2003 when Diebold computers awarded thousands of votes to the wrong candidates, and in 2004 when Diebold exerted last-minute pressure on the state to approve voting equipment only to have it break down in a quarter of Alameda County polling places.
In June, county supervisors signaled a willingness to increase their original $12 million investment in Diebold equipment by approving negotiations for purchase of newer touchscreens for an additional $6 million.
But the last straw came in July, when state tests of 96 of those new touchscreens revealed paper jams, system crashes and screen freezes in 28 percent of the machines. Secretary of State Bruce McPherson rejected the machine for use in California.
Since then, sales reps from other vendors have come knocking at the door of acting county elections chief Elaine Ginnold. She and her staff have test-driven several other voting systems. She will ask county supervisors Tuesday for the go-ahead to solicit bids on the new hybrid system in September.
The move to a paper-based voting system makes sense, Ginnold said.
"One reason is the cost of electronic machines is quite high, and in the light of changing state and federal regulations we don't see the prudence of spending a lot of money on touchscreens at this time," she said.
An equal reason comes from the county's voters. Almost 40 percent are voting on paper absentee ballots, and this proportion of mail-in voting is rising with every general election.
Meanwhile, Alameda County is making plans to issue a "Request for Information" from voting equipment vendors. Alameda's course of action has changed dramatically since June, when the board had approved a plan to spend $6 million to upgrade their Diebold electronic voting machines and stick with all-electronic balloting. Now the county is planning to go instead with a "blended" system, mixing paper ballots and electronic ballots in their polling places. The county is also allowing other vendors to compete for the new contract. More details about these developments are featured in Ian Hoffman's article in today's Oakland Tribune. Excerpts are below.
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Alameda County — the first large West Coast county to gamble on Diebold Election Systems Inc. and its electronic voting machines — is weighing whether to end that experiment, going with a more paper-based voting system and perhaps another supplier.
County officials are contacting voting-system vendors this week and asking whether they can provide a so-called "blended" voting system, with a winning bidder to be chosen in November.
Alameda is headed the way of many large counties — toward a hybrid of optical scanners for paper ballots and either electronic touchscreens or computerized ballot-marking devices for handicapped voters.
If vendors can supply such a system, this November's special election will be the county's last with Diebold touchscreens as the only voting equipment in the polling place.
Diebold remains the nation's largest voting system supplier and is selling thousands of its touchscreens in Mississippi, Utah and Ohio. And the firm still may try selling Alameda County on a new system.
But the county's move away from touchscreens and toward other vendors is a blow to Diebold after a two-year string of missteps and mistakes by the firm.
County elections officials stoutly defended the company in 2003 when Diebold computers awarded thousands of votes to the wrong candidates, and in 2004 when Diebold exerted last-minute pressure on the state to approve voting equipment only to have it break down in a quarter of Alameda County polling places.
In June, county supervisors signaled a willingness to increase their original $12 million investment in Diebold equipment by approving negotiations for purchase of newer touchscreens for an additional $6 million.
But the last straw came in July, when state tests of 96 of those new touchscreens revealed paper jams, system crashes and screen freezes in 28 percent of the machines. Secretary of State Bruce McPherson rejected the machine for use in California.
Since then, sales reps from other vendors have come knocking at the door of acting county elections chief Elaine Ginnold. She and her staff have test-driven several other voting systems. She will ask county supervisors Tuesday for the go-ahead to solicit bids on the new hybrid system in September.
The move to a paper-based voting system makes sense, Ginnold said.
"One reason is the cost of electronic machines is quite high, and in the light of changing state and federal regulations we don't see the prudence of spending a lot of money on touchscreens at this time," she said.
An equal reason comes from the county's voters. Almost 40 percent are voting on paper absentee ballots, and this proportion of mail-in voting is rising with every general election.
SB 370/Bowen likely to be taken up on Assembly Floor today
Lots of people are following SB 370, a bill by Senator Debra Bowen to require that voter-verified paper audit trails are used in California to verify the accuracy of software vote counts. The bill is likely to be taken up on the Assembly floor today. Assemblyman Tom Umberg, chair of the Assembly Elections Committee, is the member who will be taking it up. If it passes out of the Assembly, the bill heads back to the Senate for a final floor vote. Once it passes the Senate it goes to the Governor for his signature or veto. You can watch legislative proceedings via the California Channel's webcast online.
There have been no "no" votes cast on SB 370, but Secretary of State Bruce McPherson did recently come out opposing it, which was very disappointing. Hopefully the Governor will sign the bill anyway. There were several reasons the Secretary of State decided to oppose the bill -- one reason was that county election officials said it would take too much time to perform this verification process. But without this step in the election process it is impossible to give the public any reasonable assurance that computerized election results are accurate. This verification process has served California voters well for forty years using paper-voting systems but has been undermined over the past five years with the use of paperless electronic voting machines.
Why are some election officials so opposed to public verification of election results? What are they afraid of? I've thought about this a lot over the years working on these issues, and have concluded that what they are afraid of is this: they know that there are going to be problems with their vote counting software, that there will be glitches and snafus. There have always been problems with vote counting software, just as there have always been problems with any kind of software we use. I think some election officials would prefer to quietly solve these problems in the back room rather than have to account for them in public. But elections aren't for election officials. They are for the public, and the public deserves and demands a reasonable degree of confidence in the accuracy of our election results.
The Legislature responded to this need last year when it unanimously enacted and Governor Schwarzenegger signed SB 1438, to require that electronic voting machines produce a voter-verified paper audit trail. Now the Legislature needs to act again to ensure that paper trail is used by county election officials to verify the accuracy of software vote counts. Several other legislatures across the county have already passed laws this year mandating paper trails and their use to routinely verify software vote counts. Check out Verified Voting's new summary for details. Not only have other states passed this law, but the percentage of ballots counted in other states' verification process is higher than California's.
There have been no "no" votes cast on SB 370, but Secretary of State Bruce McPherson did recently come out opposing it, which was very disappointing. Hopefully the Governor will sign the bill anyway. There were several reasons the Secretary of State decided to oppose the bill -- one reason was that county election officials said it would take too much time to perform this verification process. But without this step in the election process it is impossible to give the public any reasonable assurance that computerized election results are accurate. This verification process has served California voters well for forty years using paper-voting systems but has been undermined over the past five years with the use of paperless electronic voting machines.
Why are some election officials so opposed to public verification of election results? What are they afraid of? I've thought about this a lot over the years working on these issues, and have concluded that what they are afraid of is this: they know that there are going to be problems with their vote counting software, that there will be glitches and snafus. There have always been problems with vote counting software, just as there have always been problems with any kind of software we use. I think some election officials would prefer to quietly solve these problems in the back room rather than have to account for them in public. But elections aren't for election officials. They are for the public, and the public deserves and demands a reasonable degree of confidence in the accuracy of our election results.
The Legislature responded to this need last year when it unanimously enacted and Governor Schwarzenegger signed SB 1438, to require that electronic voting machines produce a voter-verified paper audit trail. Now the Legislature needs to act again to ensure that paper trail is used by county election officials to verify the accuracy of software vote counts. Several other legislatures across the county have already passed laws this year mandating paper trails and their use to routinely verify software vote counts. Check out Verified Voting's new summary for details. Not only have other states passed this law, but the percentage of ballots counted in other states' verification process is higher than California's.
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