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October 1, 2003 Santa Barbara man raises concerns over county voting machine
security By NORA K. WALLACE He wants reassurance that the county voting machines are tamper-proof. Mr. Dell is so concerned that he even considered boycotting Tuesday's gubernatorial recall election. A Green Party member, he admits to believing in a conspiracy theory involving Republicans rigging national elections. He's not alone in his uneasiness. Following the 2000 presidential election between Al Gore and George W. Bush that ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court, legions of disenfranchised voters with similar beliefs came forward with complaints. And California's recall election was almost postponed to ensure voters in some counties weren't disenfranchised by outdated voting systems. In a plea he sent to County Clerk-Recorder Joe Holland, the Mesa resident said he wanted to be "assured that our own voting system here in Santa Barbara County is reliable and that our votes can be tracked and verified in some way that we can have confidence in." Mr. Holland says the county's AccuVote optical scan systems have numerous safeguards to ward off fraud. Twelve counties besides Santa Barbara -- including San Luis Obispo -- use the system, in which voters mark their choices on a paper ballot that is scanned when it's inserted in the locked ballot box. The machine is built by Diebold, whose chief executive, Walden O'Dell, is an active Republican fund-raiser in Ohio. That and security concerns about the company raised by a Johns Hopkins University team of experts has left Mr. Dell and others skeptical. "The people of Santa Barbara have a right to know whether this system is secure or not," Mr. Dell said of his efforts to spread the word about possible machine fraud. "I'm not here to accuse, but I'm real worried about this nationally. I want to know what they're doing . . . Maybe the machines are fine. I know others are not." The protection measures put in place by the county are extensive, including a paper trail that can be audited, Mr. Holland said. Elections workers take a manual count of 1 percent of the votes cast in every ballot type -- there are different types depending on Assembly and congressional districts -- to make sure the computer tally coincides. The staff also verifies that the number of signatures on polling sheets matches the number of votes run through the AccuVote, a system the county has used since 2000. Each AccuVote box has its own memory card, and there's a different identification number for every precinct and election. Those codes are changed periodically to discourage fraud. "This has been used across the state for a number of years," Mr. Holland said of AccuVote. "If there was a problem with it, it would have surfaced in one of these other counties. If there was a problem with the way the machines were tabulating the votes, it would have come up there." Stanford University computer science professor David L. Dill travels around the country lecturing about what he sees as the "inherent dangers" of certain voting machines, particularly the computerized touch-screen types that work similar to a bank ATM. Mr. Dill said this system, which is used in some Los Angeles County precincts, is less reliable because it leaves room for hackers to tamper with the results. "My solution is to buy optical-scan systems instead, accompanied by the ability to get manual recounts if there's any concern about the election," explained Mr. Dill, who runs a Web site called www.verifiedvoting.org. Vote security is a national issue, and attention needs to be brought to the worries, the professor believes. "Basically, an election official's highest priority is to reassure people, so if there's a problem, you won't necessarily hear about it from elections officials," Mr. Dill said. But locally, elections officials said it's almost impossible to tamper with the AccuVote results. The systems are not connected to the Internet full time, and a modem is employed for a short amount of time to transmit tallies to a central computer, said Bob Smith, elections division manager. "They're only on the wire less than a few seconds," Mr. Smith explained. "Somebody would have to know exactly when that's being transmitted to break the code. That's unlikely." Only three people know the county's password, and Mr. Holland isn't one of them. Weeks ago, the machines underwent diagnostic checks; counters were cleaned and spot-checked. Mr. Smith said, alluding to problems with hanging chads in the 2000 presidential election: "People still think we're Florida. They read something on touch screens and think they (votes) can be changed. I certainly know our system is very secure . . . We have no indication that anything has happened, and I don't believe it has. And it's not going to." Mr. Dell said he knows there can never be a truly infallible system but wonders if all the angst around the country might make it worthwhile to return to counting paper ballots by hand. And after talking to Mr. Holland for about a half-hour Tuesday, Mr. Dell said he's somewhat pacified. He said he'll take the registrar up on an offer to view the voting process at the elections division. This story includes reports from the Sacramento Bee. Nora K. Wallace can be reached by e-mail at nwallace@newspress.com. |
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Barbara landscaper Owen Dell is worried that his vote won't count.© Copyright 2003 Santa Barbara News-Press