Q & A Mark Radke on Diebold's voting machine performance

12/7/2003

Computerized voting machines were supposed to prevent a repeat of the 2000 Florida election fiasco. Instead, the high-tech ballot boxes have ignited a firestorm of their own. Critics say they're unreliable, and can actually make it easier to rig elections than old-fashioned paper ballots. The state of Ohio last week said it would delay the introduction of computerized voting machines until manufacturers solve security and reliability problems. Mark Radke, director of marketing for Diebold Election Systems, a leading maker of digital touch-screen voting machines, defended the performance of his company's systems in an interview with Globe business reporter Hiawatha Bray.

Q. Where are Diebold's voting machines in use?

A. We have the entire state of Georgia, 159 counties around Georgia, and we are now implementing phase two in Maryland, where we have four counties and we're now implementing it in the rest of the state. We're also in California, Indiana, and Kansas.

Q. Why are your machines better than paper ballots?

A. Touch-screen systems eliminate overvoting entirely. Overvoting is when you more than the allowable number of candidates in a single race. . . It was a huge problem in the November 2000 election. . . . Undervoting has been significantly reduced as well.

Q. What's wrong with undervoting? Lots of people vote for president, but skip over the candidates for city council.

A. In some other cases it might be the layout of the ballot that's confusing and causes people not to vote in a particular race because the ballot's not intuitive. . . . Our ballots are very intuitive, it's very easy to read, and it's very easy to make ions on our ballots.

Therefore, it decreases the undervoting issue. Also, touch-screen ballots enable blind people to vote on their own, for the first time in their lives. . . With the voice guidance capability of the touch-screen system, they can vote completely on their own, and in private.

Q. This is all very well, but critics say the machines can't be trusted.

A. The results tabulated by the touch-screen systems are very, very accurate and reliable, as demonstrated by the elections held in places where it's already been implemented.

Q. How do you verify the accuracy of the machines?

A. Every one of the touch-screen systems has a thermal printer in it as well. As the elections conclude, you will actually print out a tape. So you will actually have a hard count that you can use to verify the election.

Q. But if the software is buggy, the printout could also be wrong.

A. Each of the jurisdictions, before they deploy this equipment, will put it through . . .logic and accuracy testing . . . It goes through Federal Election Commission certification, using independent testing authorities, before the product is ever sent out.

It then goes through the logic and accuracy testing before it ever is used in an election.

Q. Why not openly publish the voting software, as is done in Australia, to reassure people that the system is trustworthy?

A. We feel very confident that these independent, unbiased agencies that are analyzing the equipment have done a very good job, and we don't see a need for open software because of that.

Q. Some critics say that the best solution is to have the machine print out a traditional paper ballot, which would then be placed in an old-fashioned ballot box, for use in a possible recount.

A. We certainly have the technology to do that. Basically it's not for us to say that this should be done. It's really up to the jurisdiction and the states to say this is the way it should be done. Once we get that direction . . . we can certainly provide that technology.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.