Alameda County gets tough with voting machine contractor

By Guy Ashley

CONTRA COSTA TIMES

OAKLAND - Alameda County officials met this morning with representatives from Diebold Elections Systems, indicating they were ready to get tough with the company should problems with its new $12 million electronic voting system recur.

"The problems we experienced during the March primary election were very serious," said County Counsel Richard Winnie. "We are making it very clear to Diebold that we don't want to experience those problems again."

As many as 200 precincts in Alameda County experienced problems with the county's electronic voting equipment during the March 2 primary.

Precinct workers were able to correct the problems in many cases, elections officials said, but voters were turned away at perhaps 25 polling places.

Brad Clark, the county Registrar of Voters, said touch-screen voting machines appeared to work properly, but were at times hampered by problems with encoders, small machines that take blank voting cards and encode them with information tailored to each voter.

The encoders were used for the first time in Alameda County on March 2.

Diebold officials acknowledge that encoder problems also hampered elections in San Diego County, which uses Diebold equipment as well.

A letter Clark sent to Diebold earlier this week invoked the performance clause in the county's contract with Diebold, indicating it could take court action or seek to rescind the contract should elections problems surface again.

Winnie said the county wants Diebold to present a "corrective action plan" outlining how it plans to fix problems that surfaced on March 2 and ensure such problems don't re-occur. Diebold spokesman David Bear said the company has been working with the county in the weeks after the election to make sure those problems are a thing of the past.

"We recognize our responsibility and we are working with the county to address its concerns," Bear said. "It's the right thing to do - for the voters and for the county we do business with."