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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/30/national/30CND-VOTE.html

April 30, 2004

California Bars a Firm's Voting Machines in November Election

By John Schwartz

California will prohibit the use of 15,000 of voting machines from Diebold Inc. in the November election because of of security and reliability concerns, Secretary of State Kevin Shelley announced today.

Mr. Shelley also said that he was recommending that the state's attorney general look into possible civil and criminal charges against Diebold, and said that the company may have committed fraud in its dealings with the state.

The move is the first "decertification" of controversial touchscreen voting machines, which have appeared by the tens of thousands across the nation as states scramble to upgrade their election technology. Opponents of the high-tech systems argue that the systems are less secure than what they replace, so that that the electoral process could be hacked. Without a paper trail in real time to show the votes, they argue, electoral mischief could go undetected and recounts could be impossible.

"We are taking every step possible to assure all Californians that their ballots will be counted accurately," Mr. Shelley said.

The Shelley decision comes after more than a week of furor in California over glitches that plagued the Super Tuesday primary in several counties. Mr. Shelley has said Diebold's missteps "jeopardized the outcome" of the primary, in part because thousands of San Diego voters were turned away from polling places when Diebold equipment malfunctioned. At public hearings about the voting problems, Diebold Election Systems' president, Robert J. Urosevich, said in the company's defense that "We're not idiots, though we may act from time to time as not the smartest."

A recent California report alleged the company broke state election law by installing uncertified software on machines in four counties. It is those machines, known as the AccuVote TSx, that would be prohibited.

The four counties that currently use those machines, San Diego, San Joaquin, Solano and Kern, would switch to an older technology, optical ballot scanning, in which voters mark ballots by hand and the ballots are then fed into a reader.

A state advisory committee recently recommended that the 10 counties that use touchscreen machines, and which serve 40 percent of the state's voters, should be able to use them in November so long as they also provide paper ballots for voters who are wary of the electronic ballot. The committee, known as the Voting Systems and Procedures Panel, also recommended that no new touchscreen voting machines be used in the November 2004 election unless they include a paper verification process. If they do not provide the paper alternative and meet more than a dozen other conditions for upgrading security and reliability of the machines, those touchscreen systems will also be banned in the November 2004 election.

"We are committed to supporting our 19 California customer counties, including the four affected TSX counties, in their efforts to run an efficient election in November," said Mark G. Radke, director of marketing for Diebold Election Systems. "We have confidence in our technology and its benefits, and we look forward to helping administer successful elections in California and elsewhere in the country in November."

The statement also said that the company "disputes the Secretary of State's accusations."

Mr. Shelley had to make his announcement today in order to meet the six-month deadline for changes required before the November elections. He has called for all electronic voting machines in the state to produce a paper receipt that can be viewed by voters to verify their choices by 2006; Mr. Shelley is exploring ways to speed up that process.

Opposition to high-tech voting systems has been building, with a number of groups having formed around the issue. A voters' group in Maryland, the Campaign for Verifiable Voting, filed suit against the Maryland Board of Elections last week to block the use of the state's 16,000 touchscreen machines until paper-based verification systems that display each vote can be added to them.

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which was formed by the federal government earlier this year to develop technical standards for high-tech voting, will hold its first public hearing next week in Washington. Federal lawmakers, including Rush Holt, a Democrat of New Jersey, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, a Democrat of New York, have called for voter-verified paper trails as well.

"It is a good day for democracy," said Aviel D. Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University and a leading critic of the company's technology. "Those machines are poorly designed and full of bugs and security flaws." Michael Wertheimer, a former official of the National Security Agency who tested Diebold machines at the request of the state of Maryland and found that the election systems could be easily hacked by insiders or outsiders, said that the stringent action was appropriate and that the problems with the machines could be addressed. "They're absolutely fixable said Mr. Wertheimer, but "the time for mea culpas are behind for all of these companies. They have to get out front and say, `We are going to make these systems secure.' "

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