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Vol.
I No. 9 Saved by VotePAD? Decision '06 EUREKA – Election insiders and voting security critics alike seemed
relieved at the Mar. 2 Elections Advisory Committee confab as a new
disabled-accessible balloting apparatus, the Voting-on-Paper Assistive Device
(VotePAD), was introduced. Their reaction led Clerk/Recorder Carolyn Crnich
to recommend to the Board of Supervisors on Friday they spend nearly $214,000
to purchase the VotePAD system, with hopes of being reimbursed with federal
funds made available by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). Committee members were interested in an alternative to the TSX touch
screen system from Diebold, Inc., even though the machine had just gained
certification from Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, to the chagrin of
nationally renowned critics such as Black Box Voting. “The certification included some further security measures,” Crnich Local activists from the Voter Confidence Committee, while celebrating the
decision not to purchase new Diebold machines, still had questions regarding
the continuing use of the AccuVote optical scan ballot system, preferring
hand-counted ballots. “The primary objection is that our votes are recorded by optical scanners
that use illegal interpreter code,” Voter Confidence Committee organizer Dave
Berman stated on his GuvWurld blog (guvwurld.blogspot.com). “There is no
basis for confidence in the results reported once the date has been converted
into the non-human readable, proprietary AccuBasic programming language of
Diebold…while VotePAD is far superior to touch screen machines, the method of
counting renders it a false alternative.” In her recommendation to the Board of Supervisors for their session next
Tuesday, Crnich also suggested negotiations with Vote Here
(www.votehere.com), a division of Dategrity, Inc. of Bellevue, Washington to
establish their “Mail-In Ballot Tracker” as a pilot project to track absentee
ballots to verify their chain of custody and authenticity. The cost was
estimated to be less than $20,000, although the topic hadn‘t been raised yet
by the Elections Advisory Commitee. Berman and other voting security critics held their objections off in the
meeting while Dianna Smith of Vote-PAD, Inc. (vote-pad.us) made her
presentation. Smith represented a privately held firm, also out of
Washington, which is seeking certification with the Secretary of State’s
office as HAVA-compliant. Her voting is already in use in Wisconsin, in Yolo
County and will be used this June in 12 Alameda County precincts as a pilot
project. Consisting of little more than a ballot-filled binder with some plastic
sheets, a special sensor pen and an audio cassette player, its very low-tech
nature as a non-computerized device was attractive to a committee frustrated
with the definitions provided by Diebold for election security. “It behaves much like a cane or a seeing-eye dog…it doesn’t tabulate
anything but it allows you to keep the ballots you are using,” Smith said.
“It’s actually very gorgeous to watch someone who hasn’t been able to vote
independently before vote on this.” Voters with varying disabilities would have materials tailored to their
needs, with large-font instructions, Braille and an audio recording of the
ballot. A vibrating pen is also used along with a navigation sheet to confirm
a voter’s selections and prevent stray marks. “I can see it’s going to take some level of expertise to accommodate folks
with disabilities,” Supervisor Jimmy Smith (no relation) commented as Dianna
Smith demonstrated the varying uses of VotePAD. Her initial estimate of
$175,000 was exceeded by the eventual purchase price of $213,980 ($199,515
plus tax), but far less than early estimates of installing a similar number
of TSX machines from Diebold as earlier recommended by Crnich. Charles Douglas is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the Humboldt Sentinel. He can be
reached at editor@humboldtsentinel.com. Copyright ©
2005-06, Humboldt Sentinel. All rights reserved. |
said as the
meeting convened. “[McPhereson] found the problems that existed with the
memory card could be mitigated.”
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