New Voting Method Faulted
 Group Urges State To Forgo Computers
December 9, 2005
By MARK PAZNIOKAS, Hartford Courant  
 
As a Yale University professor of computer science, Michael Fischer is hardly a Luddite. Yet he is part of a coalition warning Connecticut not to trust its elections to computers.

Fischer and other members of TrueVoteCT urged the state Thursday to postpone plans to the next generation of voting machine this month.

   
They called on Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz to reopen the ion process to consider an improved version of an old technology - paper ballots counted by optical scanners.

Bysiewicz, whose office has narrowed its choice to three computerized machines, rejected their call, saying a delay would violate state purchasing rules and cause Connecticut to miss a Jan. 1 federal deadline.

Acknowledging that voting technology is rapidly evolving, Bysiewicz said she would be happy if Congress extended the deadline by one year. The wisdom of a delay appears to be the only point, however, on which she and TrueVoteCT agree.

The exchange Thursday is being repeated across the country, as activists distrustful of computer voting technology have mobilized to influence a buying spree of new voting machines.

"There is obviously a latent distrust for technology and a belief you can't count on technology, at least not 100 percent," said Andy Sauer of Common Cause. "With the elections we've had in the past few years, especially in Florida, people feel a voting system has to be foolproof."

Common Cause successfully lobbied this year with TrueVoteCT for a state law requiring that any new voting machines include a voter-verifiable paper trail that could be used in recounts. They anticipated a move for new machines.

The catalyst for the new purchases is the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, which requires that federal elections be conducted with machines that are accessible to the disabled and produce an audit trail to guard against fraud.

In Connecticut, that means replacing the mechanical lever machines that most of the state's 169 cities and towns have used for decades.

A handful of towns use paper ballots and optical scanners, but the ballot-and-scanner combination meets only half of HAVA's requirements: They leave a paper trail, but disabled voters cannot use paper ballots without assistance.

TrueVoteCT asked Bysiewicz to consider a ballot-marking device certified last summer as HAVA-compliant. The AutoMARK allows disabled voters to mark a ballot that can then be read by an optical scanner.

Headphones and a "talking pen" allow the blind to mark their ballots. For those with other disabilities, the device has foot pedals and breath controls.

Bysiewicz said that ES&S, the company that markets the AutoMARK, failed to answer the state's request for proposals.

Russ Klenet, a company spokesman, said that ES&S did not submit a formal proposal because no company could realistically meet the deadlines and other requirements of Connecticut's request for proposals.

But ES&S did offer in October to make a presentation about its AutoMARK device and a compatible optical scanner. Bysiewicz said she declined, since the meeting could violate Connecticut purchasing rules.

Bill Bunnell, a director of TrueVoteCT, said Thursday that the rules appeared to allow Bysiewicz flexibility to act in the best interests of the state.

"ES&S is the largest provider of elections systems in the world," Klenet said in a telephone interview. "For ES&S not to have the opportunity to provide a range of products for Connecticut to review doesn't seem right."

Originally, HAVA seemed to require only that every polling place have one compliant machine for the disabled next year. Other voters still could use the old lever machines. In September, a federal advisory group advised the states that all use of lever machines must end in 2006, raising the stakes for the ion process.

Bysiewicz is considering three finalists for Connecticut's new voting machine: two touch-screen devices, similar to a bank ATM, and a machine with mechanical buttons that interfaces with a computer. All three have headphones that would guide a blind voter. They also have printers that produce a record that voters can see to verify their vote.

Richard Abbate, the president of an association representing registrars of voters - and a likely Republican candidate for secretary of the state next year - said Bysiewicz should consider the AutoMARK system so towns have a choice.

Once the state chooses one of the three HAVA-compliant machines, municipalities will have two options. They can replace all their machines with the HAVA-compliant computerized device. Or they can buy one for each polling place for use by the disabled and provide an optical scanner and paper ballots for everyone else.

But TrueVoteCT says that most towns will be reluctant to have two systems, so they effectively will be forced to use a computerized system that may be subject to breakdowns and fraud.