Elections board picks optical-scan system
Choice ignores officials' recommendations

By Jim Sparks
JOURNAL REPORTER

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The Forsyth County Board of Elections decided yesterday to recommend that county commissioners buy voting machines that scan paper ballots instead of buying touch-screen machines that record votes electronically.

The board did recommend buying some electronic touch-screen machines but only for use at handicapped-accessible voting stations.

The new system will replace the punch-card method of voting that will be abandoned by next year, by order of state election officials.

The move went against the advice of the county's top elections officials. They favored the electronic touch-screen machines, which are easier to work with than paper ballots.

Concerns over voter confidence drove the board's decision despite recent state laws requiring all electronic machines to keep a paper trail of each vote tallied.

"The board affirms again its own confidence in the audibility of DRE's (Direct Record Electronic systems) but acknowledges that a not insignificant number of voters are unfamiliar with improvements that have been made in their design and use," Eric Elliott, the board's secretary, said in a prepared statement approved by the board's other two members, John Redding and Chairwoman Joan Cardwell.

The board also recommended that commissioners machines made by the Election Systems and Software Co.

That also went against the recommendation of county elections officials who favored a DRE system made by Diebold Election Systems.

County elections officials like the Diebold Accuvote touch-screen system because it has a tamper-proof paper trail that lets voters see where their votes have been marked down.

Kathie Chastain Cooper, the county's director of elections, was visibly angered by the board's move.

"I strongly object to this decision," Chastain Cooper told the board.

After the meeting, she said that elections officials had rejected using optical scanners at least twice before.

"We looked at optical scanners years ago and rejected them in favor of punch cards because punch cards were more accurate," Chastain Cooper said. "Although improvements were made, we looked at them again a few years ago and decided they were just not the way to go."

The optical scanners would cost about half of the $4 million dollars that the county has set aside for the new machines next year. Buying touch-screen machines would take most of the money.

However, buying, distributing and storing paper ballots, which are three times larger than the punch cards now used, will cost more in the long run, Chastain Cooper said. Federal law requires that paper ballots be kept for 22 months after each election.

The two vendors considered by the county are among three that met technical and administrative standards to sell voting machines in North Carolina, as determined by a panel of computer and election experts.

However, a lawsuit filed by a civil-liberties group last week asks that a judge prevent the chosen companies from selling equipment on the grounds that officials failed to properly review software information from their machines.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, based in California, filed a complaint Dec. 8 in Wake Superior Court, on behalf of Joyce McCloy, a voting-reform activist from Winston-Salem. The lawsuit asks the court to intervene and block what it called "unqualified voting systems."

Judge Donald Stephens heard arguments on the complaint yesterday but declined to rule because he is new to the case.

Another hearing was scheduled for Dec. 21, and Matt Zimmerman, an attorney for the foundation, said that Stephens hopes to rule within days.

The State Board of Elections faces a tight schedule to get new or upgraded voting machines in 90 of North Carolina's 100 counties before the May primary.

The board agreed Dec. 1 that Diebold Election Systems, Election Systems & Software and Sequoia Voting Systems met minimum technical and administrative standards to sell their machines in North Carolina.

The county could lose about $322,000 in federal money if it does not have a new voting system in place by Dec. 31. The county also faces a state-imposed deadline of 2006 to get rid of its punch-card voting machines.

The foundation's lawsuit against two state agencies wants to prevent the companies from selling voting equipment because it contends that officials failed to properly review and assemble software information for their machines.

The suit is the second in recent months involving electronic voting machines in North Carolina.

Diebold argued in court last month that it couldn't meet North Carolina's requirements to provide computer source-code for its equipment for technical review by election experts in case of a mishap. A judge threw out Diebold's request to be shielded from criminal prosecution if it refuses to disclose software that is owned by Microsoft Corp. or other third parties.

The new voting-machine standards were developed under a state law approved this year after errors involving electronic voting machines in Carteret County last year. Those errors led to delays in certifying winners for two statewide offices - the commissioner of agriculture and the superintendent of public instruction.

Electronic voting machines have come under scrutiny in the past few years. Critics have said that they are vulnerable to tampering by anyone with basic computer-programming skills, and that many of the machines don't produce a paper record of each vote.

When Carteret County lost 4,438 votes last year, it prompted the formation of the Joint Select Committee on Electronic Voting, which issued several recommendations for improving North Carolina's voting system.

Carteret County lost the votes after an electronic-voting machine ran out of memory to store them. An engineering flaw allowed voters to continue casting votes, but the votes were irretrievably lost.