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| Reliability of Voting Machines Questioned |
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| San Diego Union-Tribune |
| Jul 19, 2006 |
By Leslie Wolf Branscomb
The security and reliability of the county's electronic voting system was questioned yesterday by protesters, who are calling for county hearings into possible voting irregularities.
Their request, however, is likely to go unheeded. The majority of county supervisors said yesterday that hearings are unnecessary because the voting machines have been certified by the California secretary of state. Some dismissed the protest as election-year grandstanding.
Jess Durfee, chairman of the San Diego County Democratic Party, yesterday called on the supervisors to air the issue publicly.
Practices such as allowing poll workers to take the voting machines home have been widely criticized, Durfee said. “The growing crisis of confidence will continue to undermine the election process,” he said. “We risk everything if we risk the integrity of our electoral system.”
Durfee and others spoke to the supervisors at their regularly scheduled board meeting. However, the issue wasn't discussed by supervisors because it wasn't on the agenda.
Later, however, board chairman Bill Horn and Supervisor Dianne Jacob said questions about the voting machines are for state, not county, officials.
“Nobody said that there was local fraud,” Horn added. “Until I get a firm accusation of something illegal taking place, I don't have a reason to have a public hearing.”
Regarding precinct workers taking home the machines, Horn added: “The poll workers are not felons. They're volunteers, and we need every one we can get.”
Horn and Jacob said they suspected yesterday's rally was driven by election-year politics.
A spokesman for Supervisor Ron Roberts said Roberts didn't think a hearing was necessary. Supervisors Pam Slater-Price and Greg Cox were unavailable for comment.
After the meeting, about 50 protesters rallied in front of the county building.
Jeeni Criscenzo, Democratic candidate for the 49th Congressional District, said that during the June election she saw broken seals on voting machines that were supposedly tamper-proof.
“There's no way in the world you can trust all 6,000” poll workers, Criscenzo said. “It only takes one person to hack into this memory card and make changes that could change the entire outcome of the election.”
Others questioned the integrity of the vote count in the 50th Congressional District, where Republican Brian Bilbray beat Democrat Francine Busby despite her apparent lead in pre-election polls.
State Sen. Debra Bowen, D-Marina del Rey, also announced yesterday that she plans to hold public hearings into possible voting irregularities, on behalf of the newly formed Senate Select Committee on the Integrity of Elections. Bowen is a candidate for secretary of state, the office which oversees elections.
Durfee said his motivation is not partisan. “We don't trust the integrity of the process, and it warrants a response from election officials,” he said.
“The law requires that (the machines) be in a secure location, sealed and not at any point be out of the custody of an election official,” Durfee said. “If this practice continues, we can't be sure” that tampering hasn't occurred, he said.
The federal and state governments, in the wake of widespread allegations of voting improprieties in the 2000 presidential election, mandated a change from the punch-card voting system that resulted in controversy over “hanging chads” – holes that weren't punched all the way through.
The county signed a $31 million contract with Diebold Election Systems to provide the machines, and the secretary of state certified them in February, with conditions for maintaining the chain of custody and other security precautions. In the June primary election, 21 counties in California used Diebold machines.
Rumors and reports have circulated on the Internet for months that the Diebold machines are vulnerable to hacking. Yesterday some speakers said a virus could easily be inserted into the system.
“They have been deemed secure to be used in elections in California, if you use them the right way,” San Diego County Registrar of Voters Mikel Haas said yesterday.
Precinct bosses have been allowed to take voting equipment home before elections for decades to ensure that everything gets to the polling place early on election day, he said.
“It's the most effective and efficient way to distribute poll materials,” Haas said.
The workers are trained and sworn to protect the materials, and the machines are sealed. Two other poll workers check the seals on election day and sign documents attesting that they were unbroken.
Each machine is tested before voting starts to ensure that no votes have yet been entered, Haas said.
In the June election, Haas said, there were no reports of tampering. Though in about 100 cases, the paperwork regarding the seals was misplaced or not returned, he said. Those ballots were recounted by hand and showed no discrepancies with what the machine recorded, Haas said.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20060719-9999-7m19diebold.html
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