This year’s primary and general elections will give San Benito
County residents their first chance to use electronic voting
machines
– a federally-mandated method of casting ballots that has caused
controversy throughout the nation.
Hollister – This year’s primary and general elections will give San Benito County residents their first chance to use electronic voting machines – a federally-mandated method of casting ballots that has caused controversy throughout the nation.
To comply with the Help America Vote Act of 2002 – which essentially outlawed paper ballots after the 2000 presidential race when “butterfly” ballots caused confusion in Florida – San Benito County spent more than $800,000 in federal and state funds to purchase 65 electronic touch-screen voting machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems to replace the county’s punch card voting system, which have been in use for about two decades.
While some say that casting ballots electronically is more efficient and precise than using paper ballots, others criticize electronic voting, saying that the machines are prone to problems and not secure.
County Registrar John Hodges said that the new machines will make voting more convenient. Tallying votes will be faster, he said. Also, because election volunteers won’t be handling individual paper ballots, the chance of counting errors decrease, he added.
“I think the new voting touch-screens are the best out there,” Hodges said. “They’re voter-friendly and the latest technology out there. San Benito County is fortunate to have that.”
Hodges said that the electronic voting machines will make it easier to call close races – such as the 2004 Dist. 5 supervisor election that was contested after Supervisor Jaime De La Cruz won by about 10 votes – because it will provide both electronic and paper records of each vote.
“If we see a close race, we’ll automatically do a double count,” he said.
Electronic voting critics, such as citizens group BlackBoxVoting.org, disagree, saying something as important U.S. elections shouldn’t be entrusted to current electronic voting machine technology.
Calling the federal electronic voting mandate the “Hack America Vote Act,” BlackBoxVoting.org Investigator Jim March said that available electronic voting machines create the risk of small groups being able to commit large-scale election fraud
“It’s a bad law pushing bad, first generation gear down everybody’s throats,” he said. “Electronic voting opens the possibility of wholesale fraud.”
California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson’s decision February to certify electronic voting machines made by Diebold Election Systems, Inc – even after a University of California at Berkeley study found that the machines are vulnerable to tampering – sparked further outrage among electronic voting critics and led to protests outside of McPherson’s Sacramento office earlier this month.
Though much of the controversy over electronic voting has centered around Diebold machines, equipment made by Sequoia – which will be used in San Benito – has come under fire as well. An examination of Palm Beach County’s electronic voting machine records from the 2004 election found possible tampering and tens of thousands of malfunctions and errors with Sequoia machines, according to BlackBoxVoter.org, which describes itself as a nonprofit, nonpartisan citizens group.
BlackBoxVoting.org said it found 70,000 instances in Palm Beach County of cards getting stuck in the paperless ATM-like machines and that the computers logged about 100,000 errors, including memory failures.
Also, the hard drives crashed on some of the Sequoia machines and they apparently had to be rebooted over and over. And 1,475 re-calibrations were performed on Election Day on more than 4,300 units, BlackBoxVoter.org Founder Bev Harris said. Re-calibrations are done when a machine is malfunctioning, she said.
Sequoia spokeswoman Michelle Shafer disputed the findings, saying the company’s machines worked properly. Sequoia’s machines are used in five Florida counties and in 21 states.
“There was a fine election in November 2004,” Shafer said.
She said many of the errors in the computer logs could have resulted from voters improperly inserting their user cards into the machines. The remaining errors would not affect the vote results because each unit has a backup system, she said.
Despite the concerns held by some, Hodges said that he doesn’t anticipate any problems with Sequoia machines in San Benito.
“I don’t have any concerns whatsoever,” he said. “No. 1, the state has certified the machine. It also has a paper trail. It’s very reliable.”
The paper trail allows voters to see a print out of their vote choices so they can verify that the machine correctly took their ballot.
March called Sequoia’s paper trail a “toilet paper trail.” A primary concern is that the votes on the paper trail are kept in sequential order, opening the possibility that an organization could compare the paper trail to the voting roll and determine how people voted, he said. Such information can be used nefariously against people, he added.
“It’s breaking the privacy of the vote,” March said. “That there are organizations that would do it if they could is very troubling.”
March also said that if a voter looks at the paper trail and realizes that they mistakenly voted differently than they wanted to, the mis-vote will remain on the paper trail and make it difficult to determine which is the right vote in the event of a hand recount.
“You’ve got some elderly volunteer looking at the paper,” he said. “It’s real easy to miss.”
Hodges said that poll workers will receive “extensive training” for using the new machines.
Voters will still have the option of using a paper ballot, Hodges said. Paper ballots will be filled out at polling places and then counted electronically with an optimal scan machine. Absentee ballots are not affected by the switch to electronic voting, he said.
The Associated Press Contributed to this Report
