Posted on 04/24/2006 11:18:45 AM PDT by calcowgirl
One of the first counties in the state to embrace electronic voting is headed back to paper -- and it's not the only one.
Alameda County residents going to the polls June 6 will be asked for the first time in five years to fill in ovals on paper ballots rather than casting their votes on costly touch-screen machines.
"It's a little bit of back to the future," joked Elaine Ginnold, the county's acting registrar of voters.
The decision to go back to paper stems from changes in state law that toughen requirements for touch-screen machines and render the county's equipment inadequate.
Merced and Plumas counties also will switch back to paper ballots. And earlier this week Los Angeles officials agreed to upgrade their current optical scan system that counts paper ballots instead of spending more than $100 million to buy a touch-screen system.
"The laws for electronic voting are changing at a dizzying pace," said Conny McCormack, registrar-recorder and clerk for Los Angeles County. "We've seen how other counties have gone out and bought systems and in a few years they can't even use them. For us, with the kind of financial commitment we'd need to make, it doesn't make sense at this time."
All of this contrasts with the rush to touch-screen voting after the Florida ballot-counting fiasco in the 2000 presidential election. To be sure, none of the California counties will return to the famous punch-card systems that made "chad" a regular part of the political lexicon.
After that election, many counties bought electronic systems. Since then, however, experts have raised questions about the accuracy of the machines and state officials have imposed new requirements, including mandates for a paper trail to prevent voter fraud. At the same time, more voters are turning to mail-in ballots, which makes the future of electronic voting murkier than ever.
"The rules have changed for e-voting," said Stephen Weir, clerk-recorder for Contra Costa County. "Now they need to have a paper trail and that means major modifications done to these machines. That isn't a simple process. It's very awkward. That said, e-voting technology is continuing to grow. It's not finished."
There are counties in the state that agree. At least 13, including Santa Clara and Napa, plan to use electronic voting as their primary system in June. Some of those counties retrofitted their machines to make them eligible for the June election, while others bought newer, updated versions.
Nevertheless, it's hard to ignore Alameda County's move back to paper. While it is not the first Bay Area county to go back to paper -- Solano County did the same after its machines were decertified in November 2003 -- Alameda County is especially interesting because it was the first in the region to move to electronic voting and the second in the state behind Riverside County.
The county purchased its now-outdated Diebold electronic voting system for $12 million in 2001. However, the equipment had glitches. Diebold eventually agreed in 2004 to pay the state and Alameda County $2.6 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that it made false claims when it sold its equipment to the county.
The settlement came after local and state officials found that Diebold had installed uncertified software in the county's touch-screen machines and that its system was vulnerable to computer hackers. County elections officials also found the system's vote-tabulating program gave several thousand absentee votes to the wrong candidate during the October 2003 gubernatorial recall election.
Now the county is hoping to put those problems in the past. It plans to borrow optical scan equipment to count the paper ballots in June and is in negotiations with two vendors for a "hybrid" or blended voting system it hopes to use in November that would also rely heavily on paper.
That system -- which could cost between $8 million and $18 million -- would require most voters to use paper ballots but would supply a small number of touch-screens, mainly for the disabled.
The new system also would provide scanners at polling sites to help count ballots while also reading each ballot to see if it was filled out properly. Under federal law, voters can receive a new ballot if the scanners discover an error has been made.
There is another potential benefit of having the scanning system, adds Ginnold, the acting registrar. Counties need scanners anyway to count the increasing number of mail-in ballots. Out of the approximately 345,000 registered voters in Alameda County expected to cast ballots in June, nearly 40 percent will never make it to the polls.
Nevertheless, even those who have been conservative in choosing the voting system their counties will use admit electronic voting is a likely part of future elections.
"We feel it has value and is accurate," said McCormack, who's own Los Angeles County has touch-screens for early voting. "Many of the people who use them love them. It's just the laws change too fast -- and it's a lot of money -- to commit to a system that may be unusable in a few years."
Before the critics of paper ballots jump in, let me say that the 30 Florida counties that used paper ballots in 2000 had essentially zero errors in the recount.
In 2004, nearly all Florida counties used paper ballots with no problems. The three counties that had trouble were the ones that used touch-screen machines -- by complete coincidence, they were the same three counties that had massive problems in 2000.
The problem is that paper ballots are serialized and can be audited. You can't jam in extras that weren't signed for on election day. If the machine can't read the ballot due to voter incompetence, chances are a human can, and chances are that humans can reach an easy agreement regarding the voter's intention.
I am a big fan of paper ballots! I see this as good news.
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