E-voting opponents leave mark

By lawsuits and law, paper ballots regaining ground

By Myung Oak Kim, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published June 24, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Some think government and the makers of electronic voting machines have too much power over elections.

Some don't want computers to have any part in how we elect representatives.

Still others believe Al Gore got cheated out of the presidency.

Agree with them or not, these well-educated and persistent local activists are more than a fringe political voice.

Their work is part of why Colorado voters will see fewer electronic voting machines and more paper ballots during this fall's presidential election. They also are a big reason the legislature passed a measure creating a new election-reform commission to study how we conduct elections and suggest changes to state officials.

The same trend is happening in other states. Anti-e-voting activists and a growing number of studies by computer science experts have pushed election officials in California, New Mexico, Ohio, Florida and other states to limit the use of e-voting terminals and demand stricter audits.

Compared with 2004, more voters nationwide will cast paper ballots counted on optical scanners than push buttons on touch- screen machines that record votes with software.

"The group of people who were concerned about electronic voting started as a very small group and were not paid much attention to," said outgoing Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon, D-Denver. "But I believe the group has gotten larger. It's become more mainstream and people are paying more attention to them.

"They are an entity that's at the table and has a voice that is listened to."

Secretary of State Mike Coffman, who frequently has been criticized by these activists, takes a much dimmer view.

"I think they have a fundamental belief that anything electronic, as it relates to voting, is evil and undermines our political system," Coffman wrote in an e-mail to the Rocky. "They live in a world of conspiracy theories and are highly motivated. No matter what I do, so long as it leaves some form of electronic voting intact, it will be wrong by their standards."

Not a monolith

The voting activist community in Colorado and across the U.S. formed over the last decade, and mostly since the 2000 Florida election debacle. It includes organizations ranging from national networks of top computer science experts at MIT and Cal Tech to local organizations of a handful of people. They run the spectrum of political agendas, said Charles Stewart, a voting systems expert and chairman of the political science department at MIT.

"It's a very odd cast of characters," he said. "The opposition ranges from academics who are very serious and concerned about the security lapses in the electronic machines all the way to modern-day Luddites."

In Colorado, a segment of activists say the only way to conduct elections is by paper ballots counted by hand.

Others focus on trying to make elections fully observable by the public.

Still others agree to the use of electronic machines if they are extensively checked for potential anomalies after elections.

With few exceptions, the local activists have not developed cooperative relationships with county clerks.

Estimated at more than 100, with a handful of especially vocal leaders, local activists hound clerks for election results and documents about election laws and e-voting manufacturers. They also publicly accuse clerks of being too cozy with e-voting manufacturers and not knowledgeable enough about computer systems to judge voting machines.

The relationship between clerks and activists is so poor that the Colorado County Clerks Association has refused to allow activists into its recent meetings.

Turning to the courts

The anti-e-voting community also caused headaches for clerks with a 2006 lawsuit.

With the help of a national organization called Voter Action, a group of 11 local activists and lawyers from the Denver firm Wheeler Trigg Kennedy sued former Secretary of State Gigi Dennis to block e-voting. The activists included Democrats, Republicans, Independents and members of smaller parties.

Judge Lawrence Manzanares, now deceased, did not substantiate many claims made in the suit. But he ruled that Dennis violated law by not adequately checking whether voting machines are secure. He also ordered a redo of equipment testing using stricter rules.

That process took place under Coffman, who announced in December that thousands of machines were unfit because of security and accuracy flaws.

Coffman held a series of public hearings in which dozens of activists testified about their distrust of the voting equipment.

Aided by a new law that gave him flexibility to take into account new test results and security procedures followed by election workers, Coffman later reversed his decertification decisions and approved all of the machines for use this year. Activists contend Coffman violated law, which he adamantly denies.

This spring, activists backed a measure, sponsored by Gordon and top lawmakers, to implement paper ballot voting statewide. That bill later died after stiff opposition from clerks and Coffman.

Nevertheless, several county clerks decided on their own to limit the use of electronic voting this year.

The lead lawyer in the 2006 lawsuit, known as Conroy v. Dennis, was Paul Hultin.

Irregularities in 2004

Hultin said he first became interested in voting system issues during the November 2004 presidential election.

At the time, he served as an election watchdog for the New Mexico Democratic Party in a Las Vegas precinct with a high number of minorities and Democrats.

After the election, Hultin and other volunteer lawyers said they discovered that one in four voters in that precinct did not vote for president. He said other precincts showed suspicious undervotes among minorities. All those votes were cast on electronic touch-screen voting terminals - the same ones used in some Colorado counties.

That discovery led to a lawsuit against e-voting in New Mexico by Voter Action - for which Hultin does volunteer legal work. Voter Action also has filed suits in at least a half-dozen other states.

Arapahoe County Clerk Nancy Doty said the activists caused delays in the process of choosing voting systems, and they were not successful in forcing changes.

Voting machine manufacturers have been frustrated by the changing politics of elections, said David Beirne, executive director of the Election Technology Council, which represents the major e-voting manufacturers.

Vendors say the activists are unfairly targeting software security issues and not paying attention to other important factors in elections - election worker training and security procedures employed during elections.

kimm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2361

Reform law

Activists opposed to electronic voting were a major driver of a new election-reform law known as SB 243. Sponsored by outgoing Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon, D-Denver, the measure was approved in May by the legislature and signed by the governor earlier this month. What it does:

* Establishes a state election reform commission, consisting of 11 members chosen by Aug. 15 by state lawmakers, and the governor's and secretary of state's offices.

* Says members must be bipartisan, representative of different areas of the state, and knowledgeable in election laws and procedures, computer systems, or statistics.

* Directs the volunteer commission, which has no statutory power, to begin meeting by Nov. 14 and study at least 15 identified issues related to voting systems and elections. The commission is to issue a report with recommendations to the legislature by March 1, 2009.

• June 25, 2008

  11:11 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  SapiensAmericana writes:

  There is no reason, no excuse, nor rationale why we should accept the faintest shadow of doubt in our electoral procces. The credibility and technological advantages of electronic voting, were negated the moment the electronic voting machine manufacturers(Diebold and the likes) balked at the idea of a printed receipt, under the pretext of printer un-reliability. This coming from the same manufacturers of printers for Wal-Mart and every ATM machine in the country. Printers that work 24/7 all year round should be able to handle a one day gig every four years.

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