Denver may get voting reprieve

Clerk: Coffman says he's 'likely' to OK equipment

By Daniel J. Chacon, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published January 9, 2008 at 12:30 a.m.

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Denver may be able to use the electronic voting machines that Secretary of State Mike Coffman decertified only a month ago, an election official said Tuesday.

Denver Clerk and Recorder Stephanie O'Malley said Coffman called her last week and said he was "likely" to recertify the equipment if the city appealed his decision.

"We had planned to go through the appeal process notwithstanding that telephone call, but I am confident that the 240 pieces of (voting) equipment (that Coffman decertified) will be available for our use," O'Malley said at a City Council committee meeting.

Tuesday, Coffman declined to say whether he was likely - as O'Malley had said - to recertify Denver's voting machines because the request first would have to go before a public hearing.

"I had thought that I could simply make a decision without that and was advised by the attorney general that I could not," Coffman said.

A voting-machine watchdog characterized Tuesday's development as another mixed message from the secretary of state.

"Secretary Coffman has been flip-flopping all over the place," said Claudia Kuhns, executive director of the Voter Integrity Project, a group that mistrusts electronic machines and prefers paper ballots.

Less than two weeks ago, she noted, Coffman recommended paper ballots.

County clerks across Colorado are worried about how they will conduct the 2008 general election after Coffman on Dec. 17 banned the use of thousands of voting machines because of alleged security and accuracy flaws.

At a public hearing Thursday at the Capitol, many clerks testified that their electronic machines are completely trustworthy, but said mail-in ballots are their first choice if they can't use their machines.

Coffman suggested early on that many electronic machines could be used if small fixes were made and some laws were amended.

On Tuesday, he told a reporter that Sequoia, which manufactured Denver's Edge II DRE voting machines, submitted additional information on a print test after the certification process had been completed. He declined to discuss the likelihood that the two other vendors whose machines he decertified would be recertified.

Ken Fields, spokesman for Election Systems & Software, whose equipment is used in Jefferson and Mesa counties, said the company will appeal Coffman's decertification ruling.

"We're confident the vast majority of the issues raised during the testing were a result of the inability to complete the testing during the allotted time restraints," he said. "It wasn't about any functional shortcoming of the equipment."

Steven Bennett, a Sequoia executive, said company representatives met with Coffman's staff after their DRE machines had been decertified.

One problem Coffman's office cited, he said, was that a printer attachment known as a voter verifiable paper audit trail didn't print properly.

"We went in and demonstrated that it did, and they accepted that change," Bennett said.

Sequoia, which also is the vendor for Arapahoe, Elbert and Pueblo counties, plans to file an appeal with Coffman by Monday.

If Denver's voting machines are recertified, O'Malley said she faces a "huge hurdle" in convincing voters that they're reliable.

But she said the voting machines are a necessity.

"The disabled community has to be able to vote, and it's only those DREs at this juncture that affords us the opportunity to be in compliance with the Help America Vote Act," she said.

chacond@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5099 Staff writer Bill Scanlon contributed to this report.

Appeals in the works

Some metro-area county clerks say they plan to appeal the secretary of state's decertification of their voting machines.

* "We think there are processes that already have been set up that can help verify the reliability of the equipment," Douglas County Clerk and Recorder Jack Arrowsmith said.

* "We have many procedures in place to secure the security of the election," Arapahoe County Clerk and Recorder Nancy Doty said. "Once they consider all the security procedures in place, I feel confident the secretary will reconsider the certification."

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