Touch screens worry voters
South Florida voter opinions reflect increasing national concern about the security of electronic voting and the desire for a paper record.
BY ERIKA BOLSTAD
ebolstad@herald.com

As voting reform sweeps the nation, its main mechanism the electronic voting machine is increasingly under fire.

Miami-Dade and Broward counties already are exploring ways to enhance voter confidence in the machines, and 25 percent of likely voters polled in Broward said they were ''not confident at all'' that the electronic system would accurately tally their vote.

While most people who had used the machines said they were ''very satisfied,'' more than half said it was important to have a paper record of their vote something that does not exist at present. The telephone survey was conducted last week for The Herald by Florida Voter.

''I think if people knew more about the potential problems associated with the machines, the number would actually be higher,'' said U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, a Boca Raton Democrat who has been advocating paper records for the voting machines used in South Florida.

''When you vote on these machines, you have no idea whether your vote is being counted and tabulated properly,'' Wexler said. ``If something goes wrong, there is nothing that can be done. Your vote is lost.''

Manufacturers of voting system software and hardware vigorously defend the accuracy and security of their product.

''If we can trust memory cards to program aircraft, and we can trust memory cards to program satellites and the devices we use in surgery, why don't we trust the same memory devices in voting machines?'' asked Russ Klenet, a lobbyist for Election Systems & Software, the company that manufactured machines used in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.

Klenet points out that results are stored in three different places inside each machine, a redundancy designed to prevent errors.

Among the chief national critics of electronic voting is David Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford University.

Electronic voting is not only prone to errors and susceptible to fraud, but leaves no paper trail for a recount, Dill said.

And that seems to be the biggest obstacle to the faith of the voting flock.

Once the buttons are pushed, the screen is reviewed and the digital ''thank you'' is displayed, the voter walks away with nothing except a sticker from the poll worker.

''The machine could do something behind the scenes and no one would ever know,'' Dill said. ``Right now, the only option I really see is paper.''

What started as a fringe movement among computer scientists and community activists has entered mainstream discussions about elections.

Commissioners in Miami-Dade and Broward counties are exploring whether to attach printers to their existing iVotronic touch-screen voting machines. Reports outlining options are pending in both counties. Broward's is expected next week.

Both counties put the machines into use in 2002 when the state Legislature outlawed punch-card voting systems after the 2000 presidential recount.

`BILL OF GOODS'

''I think they got sold a bill of goods from the computer people,'' said Terry Low, a Republican voter from Weston who was unpleasantly startled by a recent magazine article about the technology.

``They went off and bought something without totally thinking it through.''

Some of the voter distrust in the equipment may be a product of the current leadership issues in the Broward elections office, said Jim Kane, lead pollster for Florida Voter and author of The Herald's poll.

Broward County Supervisor of Elections Miriam Oliphant had little support among 399 likely voters surveyed by Florida Voter Oct. 30 through Nov. 3. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percent.

Of those surveyed, 84 percent said they would not vote to reelect Oliphant. Sixty percent said they felt the governor should suspend Oliphant.

CONFIDENCE SHAKEN

The 2000 presidential recount also shook the confidence of many, Kane said. Three years ago, the percentage who felt their votes weren't going to be counted would have been closer to 5 percent, not the 25 percent measured in this poll, Kane said.

''They're not trusting the office, and they want some kind of proof, a paper trail, simply because it validates their vote,'' said Broward County Mayor Diana Wasserman-Rubin.

Currently, no state has certified use of a printer, but if there is a clamor for the equipment, the companies will meet the demand, said Klenet, of Election Systems & Software.

But from California to Florida, many people are suspicious and more are confused about how the machines work and how they tally votes.

''We have gone from a totally transparent process to a totally opaque one,'' said Fort Lauderdale lawyer Sam Fields, who has criticized electronic voting equipment since Broward County started considering the purchase in late 2001.

Helping to fuel the controversy has been a Johns Hopkins University report that questioned the security of systems made by Diebold Election Systems. Many of the issues raised in that report related to ''smart cards'' ed in voting machines by individual voters. The equipment used in South Florida uses a different system, controlled by poll workers, not voters.

Fueling the controversy was also a fundraising letter sent by Diebold's chief executive, Walden W. O'Dell. According to news reports, he wrote that he was ``committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.''

WIDE SUPPORT

Still, electronic equipment is widely supported by election supervisors across the country, who swear by its accuracy and love the fact they don't have to spend thousands of dollars on paper ballots at each election. Florida elections officials recently issued a report affirming their support for the equipment.

The nation's largest voting jurisdiction, Los Angeles County, is gradually transitioning to electronic voting, said Conny McCormack, who oversees elections for the county's four million registered voters.

McCormack, who appeared on an election-reform edition of The Diane Rehm Show on National Public Radio last week, told listeners she fears the thought of printers at every precinct. We routinely see jam-ups in the grocery store register tape, McCormack said. Imagine that kind of trouble on Election Day.

''There's been no testing of any of this,'' McCormack said on the air. ``Now there's an attempt to legislate what hasn't even been invented yet.''

Oliphant has long been a critic of the ES&S machines the county purchased for her. Oliphant wanted the county to buy Sequoia machines, which are used by Palm Beach County.

OPTICAL SCANNING

But Oliphant said she's also vehemently opposed to optical scanning, a paper-based system. Some Broward County commissioners have suggested they sell off their $17.2 million inventory of machines and switch to the lower-tech equipment, which requires voters to fill in their choices with a pencil. The ballots are then scanned by a computer that reads the pencil marks and tabulates the results.

Last week, Broward County counted 14,752 mail-in ballots with the optical-scan equipment, which is used to count absentee ballots in regular elections.

''I would not recommend this countywide,'' Oliphant said Tuesday, while the votes were being counted. ``Optical scan has a lot of human error.''