http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/01/national/01VOTE.html

May 1, 2004

High-Tech Voting System Is Banned in California

By John Schwartz

California has banned the use of more than 14,000 electronic voting machines made by Diebold Inc. in the November election because of security and reliability concerns, Kevin Shelley, the California secretary of state, announced yesterday. He also declared 28,000 other touch-screen voting machines in the state conditionally "decertified" until steps are taken to upgrade their security.

Mr. Shelley said that he was recommending that the state's attorney general look into possible civil and criminal charges against Diebold because of what he called "fraudulent actions by Diebold."

In an interview, Mr. Shelley said that "their performance, their behavior, is despicable," and that "if that's the kind of deceitful behavior they're going to engage in, they can't do business in California."

The move is the first decertification of touch-screen 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, making it possible for the electoral process to be hacked.

Without a paper trail, created at the time of the voting, to show the votes, they argue, electoral flaws or fraud could go undetected and recounts could be impossible.

In a statement, Diebold's director of marketing for election systems, Mark G. Radke, said, "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's decision comes after more than a week of furor in California over glitches that plagued the Super Tuesday primary elections in March 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, Robert J. Urosevich, president of Diebold Election Systems, said in the company's defense, "We're not idiots, though we may act from time to time as not the smartest."

A report issued by Mr. Shelley's office on April 20 accused the company of breaking state election law by installing uncertified software on machines in four counties. It said that Diebold installed systems that were not tested at the federal level or certified at the state level, and that Diebold lied to state officials about the machines.

It is those machines, known as the AccuVote TSX, that have been banned from use in November.

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

Mr. Shelley followed the advice of a state advisory committee that recommended that the 10 counties that use touch-screen machines, should be able to use them in November as 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 touch-screen voting machines be used in the November election unless they include a paper verification process.

If the counties do not provide the paper ballot alternative and meet more than 20 other conditions for upgrading security and reliability of the machines, those touch-screen systems will also be banned in the November election.

"I came real close -- real close -- to decertifying the machines outright in those 10 counties," Mr. Shelley said. But he explained that he made the decertification conditional because the machines had strong support from advocates for the disabled.

He said that the goal was to "balance trying to make this election work in those 10 counties with improving voter confidence."

Mr. Shelley had to make his announcement yesterday to meet a deadline requiring that changes to election procedures be made six months before an election. 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; he said he was 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 touch-screen machines until paper-based verification systems that display each vote can be added to them.

Federal lawmakers, including Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, have called for voter-verified paper trails as well.

"Once again, California is setting an excellent example for the rest of the country," said David L. Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford University and founder of a group, VerifiedVoting.org, that is pushing for paper backup for electronic voting systems.

"Diebold earned this," he said.

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, said that the harsh action by the State of California was appropriate and that the problems with the machines could be addressed.

"They're absolutely fixable problems," 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.' "

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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