Security increased on voting results software

Patch sought after problems in November

CARRIE LEVINE    Charlotte Observer  08 April 2005

Mecklenburg elections officials are increasing safeguards on software they use to download election results, which they said should prevent a repeat of the incorrect early voting tallies they posted last November.

County elections director Michael Dickerson said Microvote, the company that makes the machines and software, has developed "an additional level of security" that would prevent votes from any machine being downloaded more than once.

"It effectively does not allow you to download a panel twice," he said.

In November, when tallying early voting results, county election officials were overwhelmed by the number of them and double-and-triple counted some votes, while leaving others uncounted.

The faulty tallies caused them to post incorrect results on election night.

The difficulties did not stop there. While the board was reviewing provisional ballots after the election, a Republican campaign operative sued the board, saying he was entitled to monitor members closely as they reviewed individual provisional ballots. The Republican, Brian Francis, got a restraining order that stopped ballot review for a day.

The two sides worked out a compromise that required Francis to stay 4 feet away, behind a piece of masking tape.

Election board members acknowledged that the election was difficult. Board member Jeff Bradsher, a Democrat, said the board should consider keeping an attorney on retainer for situations such as the Francis lawsuit, which left them scrambling to find an attorney without a conflict of interest who could represent them.

The board members are scheduled to report to a county committee later this month on ways to help elections run smoothly. At a Board of Elections meeting Wednesday, they said they plan to:

? increase the number of precincts, especially in high-growth areas of the county;

? recommend creating a "call center" for roughly 45 days prior to an election to handle questions from voters;

? Expand the county's election Web site, www.meckboe.org, to include more information for voters and to allow voters to track their requests for an absentee ballot on the Web site;

? recommend increasing the number of early voting sites to shorten the long waits some voters faced in November.

Lines at the Board of Elections offices on Kenilworth Avenue, an early voting site, were so bad that Dickerson said the building's condominium association had taken a protest vote against allowing early voting to take place at the office again.

Dickerson said the law would permit the board to move early voting from the office to a nearby location, which might also give elections officials more office space.

Dickerson said the new software security option will be tested this spring and will be in place before both the City Council primary and election in the fall.

Dickerson also said state legislators are also considering changing the law to allow elections officials to begin tallying votes earlier on Election Day. He said the extra time would help to ensure accuracy.

In other business Wednesday, the board split six precincts that elections officials said had grown too large to be accommodated at a single voting spot.

Voters in precincts 107, 78, 139, 204, 223 and 238 who are affected by the split will be notified in a letter from the elections board sometime before the September primary, Dickerson said.