Confidence in vote system a wild card

Uncertainty swirls as elections loom

By Myung Oak Kim, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published June 7, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Photo by Evan Semon / The The Rocky/2007

Millions of dollars in electronic voting machines sit in a warehouse in the 3800 block of York Street in Denver.

Voting in Colorado has come a long way since the days of punch cards and lever machines.

The state has seen a dramatic shift in voting systems in an effort to conduct trustworthy, accurate elections, part of the ongoing national reform movement that followed the 2000 presidential election debacle in Florida.

But the transition has been beset by its own problems, and the voting-system environment remains highly unstable with the Aug. 12 primary and Nov. 4 general elections approaching.

Most Colorado voters will have three options: Filling out a paper ballot at home and putting it in the mail, marking a paper ballot at a polling site that will be put through a scanning machine, or pushing buttons on an electronic voting terminal.

The outcome will measure whether the state is capable of producing a relatively trouble-free day at the polls - which most voters see as a fundamental tenet of democracy.

Despite billions in federal tax dollars spent on updating voting equipment, the machines used today in Colorado and across the nation are still mired in controversy.

Numerous studies conducted by computer science experts and state election officials - including Secretary of State Mike Coffman - indicate that the technology is unsophisticated, vulnerable to hacking and capable of miscounting without detection.

But the machines will be widely used in Colorado anyway.

Most of the state's election clerks vouch for the machines, and there hasn't been enough money or political will to move away from them, especially on the eve of the presidential election.

An effort to move the state to all paper ballots failed earlier this year, even though it was backed by Gov. Bill Ritter and top lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

So Colorado is making the best of it.

To that end, Coffman's office has imposed numerous restrictions on the use of the machines as well as audits and tests to prevent sabotage and to detect counting errors. His office also has required all voting systems to be rebuilt with software that has been federally tested and deemed safe.

"Colorado's citizens can feel confident with these systems because we have placed so many rigorous conditions on their use and also have required more post-election audits than in the last election cycle," Coffman said in a written response for this story. "Moreover, the fact that there has never been a documented security breach of electronic voting equipment in any election in Colorado is significant and should comfort voters that the systems are trustworthy."

Systems vary by county

Paper ballots will be available in over 50 counties. Eight counties - including Mesa, Weld and Arapahoe - will use electronic voting machines exclusively at the polls.

Denver, seeking to reverse a string of election day failures, is making a drastic change from voting-machine based elections at vote centers (polling sites open to everybody countywide) - to paper ballot-based elections at neighborhood polling sites.

"We have confidence that these machines are accurate," said Michael Scarpello, Denver's director of elections. "But we understand the perception problem . . . so we made this decision that it was time to break loose from those machines and use paper."

Denver was one of the earliest counties to buy electronic voting machines, purchasing a fleet of terminals in 1997 that are now being discarded. Newer voting machines will be available to accommodate disabled voters.

The nation's conversion to e-voting machines was quick, dramatic and "at a time when the technology wasn't ready," said Lawrence Norden, director of the Voting Technology Project at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

"We're kind of in this catch-22 nationally, where we realize there are big problems with the machines but we don't necessarily have the money to deal with it," Norden said.

Former Denver city councilwoman Rosemary Rodriguez is now chair of the federal Election Assistance Commission. She says the agency is taking seriously criticisms of electronic voting equipment, and is looking at a way to push uniform testing.

"I think the electronic systems, if they're properly set up and tested, are accurate," she said. "The issue is whether the voter trusts them or not."

Hanging chads, heads

Voting systems became a target after the 2000 Florida "hanging chads" disaster, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately decided the presidential election.

Congress responded by passing the 2002 Help America Vote Act, which established the EAC to, among other things, develop standards and to test the equipment.

The EAC was slow to launch, creating its first set of standards in 2005, with newer rules now in the works. It still hasn't certified any machines.

In the meantime, local officials were required to run their elections while complying with new mandates, including the accommodation of disabled voters. As a result, many jurisdictions bought Direct Recording Equipment, voting terminals that record votes with software. Some featured paper trail records; others didn't.

The National Association of State Election Directors, a volunteer group, arranged for testing labs to scrutinize the machines against standards set in 1990 and 2002 by the Federal Election Commission.

The voting machine manufacturers paid for the tests.

"The (NASED) testing was very inadequate," said Warren Stewart, senior project director at the Verified Voting Foundation, a national group that advocates voting systems that can be independently checked. "In many cases the testing labs were not really determining . . . that the equipment they were certifying was actually in compliance with the standards at all."

Computer scientists and voting activists presented evidence that the machines were easily hacked, that someone could infect one machine with a virus that could spread across a network without detection.

A 2006 Florida congressional race using DREs in Sarasota showed that 18,000 votes appeared to be missing - a discrepancy that was never explained. Those machines, Election System & Software iVotronic touch-screen terminals, are the same kind used in Mesa and Jefferson counties.

Trying to move forward

In response to those and other concerns, several states, including Colorado, decided to do their own testing.

In 2004, the legislature passed a bill requiring state testing procedures for the equipment. It was sponsored by now-retired state Rep. Bill Sinclair, R-Colorado Springs.

Sinclair said the bill was designed to modernize Colorado's voting system. It wasn't driven by distrust of the machines, he said.

"We were trying to move forward and do the right thing and advance the technology in this new arena," he said.

The new law required the Secretary of State's Office to establish standards and then test machines against those standards.

In late 2005, then Secretary of State Gigi Dennis adopted standards, known as Rule 45. In early 2006, Dennis approved machines made by four manufacturers - ES&S, Sequoia, Diebold (now called Premier Election Solutions) and Hart InterCivic.

A few months later, a group of local voting activists who don't trust the machines sued Dennis. In September 2006, a Denver judge said Dennis violated state law by not establishing minimum security standards for the machines, and ordered stricter criteria and a redo of the testing.

That job fell to Coffman, who took office in early 2007.

He established a panel that rewrote Rule 45, as well as other directives about securing and auditing elections. Coffman also a hired a group of people to test the machines. The revised rules are stricter than federal standards, his office said.

The new testing dragged on for over six months, with Coffman's office accusing manufacturers of trying to delay the process. Then the results came.

On Dec. 17, Coffman decertified all equipment made by ES&S. He decertified paper ballot scanners made by Hart Intercivic - used in about 47 counties, and DRE's made by Sequoia - used in four counties, including Denver.

Coffman approved all Premier machines - used in 14 counties.

Soon after that announcement, Coffman issued a press release saying paper ballots were more trustworthy.

His decertification decision unleashed a political storm. County election clerks insisted that the machines worked fine, and that they couldn't conduct the presidential elections without them. Lawmakers worried aloud about election day chaos.

Several weeks later, Ritter and top lawmakers announced that they would propose a measure that would call for voters statewide to cast paper ballots at polling places as the "tried and true" method of voting.

Most clerks staunchly fought the measure as too expensive, and said there wasn't enough time to make the switch.

Coffman decided to support the clerks and opposed the bill.

By then, lawmakers had already passed a bill that gave Coffman more flexibility to reapprove the machines. By March, Coffman reversed his original decertification decisions and certified all the machines.

Machine manufacturers defend their products.

"The machines have been well developed based on what was the demand in the certification process at the time," said David Beirne, executive director of the Election Technology Council, which represents the major manufacturers. "The criticism that you're hearing is amounting to a change in what the demand is."

"The technology is there. It has been proven successful. But the integrity of the election always comes down to the system of checks and balances that are documented in state law."

Coffman said every voting method has its issues, including paper ballots.

"There is no such thing as a perfect voting system," he said.

kimm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2361

A recent history of Colorado's e-voting systems

* May 2004: Legislature passes HB 1227, which calls for more oversight over voting equipment and elections, including the creation of state certification.

* Spring 2006: Secretary of State Gigi Dennis approves voting equipment.

* June 2006: Activists sue Dennis to block e-voting.

* Sept. 2006: A Denver judge says Dennis violated law by not properly testing the e-voting equipment for security and accuracy, and orders new testing.

* March 2007: Secretary of State Mike Coffman's office revises Rule 45, the foundation of the certification process, and his testing board begins work.

* Dec. 17, 2007: Coffman decertifies thousands of voting and counting machines used statewide, citing security and accuracy flaws.

* Feb. 11: Gov. Bill Ritter signs into law HB 1155, which gives Coffman latitude to recertify e-voting equipment for use in 2008 as long as standards are not compromised.

* March 4: Coffman reverses his decertification decisions based on new information provided by manufacturers and security procedures followed by county election clerks. All machines are approved for use in 2008.

* March 20: Lawmakers defeat SB 189, which would have implemented statewide paper ballot voting at polling places. Coffman and most county clerks had fought the bill.

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