Election commissioners face crucial choice

Advocate presses for optical scanners over touch screens

By FRITZ MAYER

MONTICELLO, NY — When Bo Lipari, a former software engineer, heard about new plans to use computers as voting machines back in 2001, he said to himself, “That’s a terrible idea.”

Now, he’s crisscrossing the state trying to persuade county commissioners to choose paper ballots with optical scanners, instead of touch-screen systems or direct recording electronic (DRE) systems. He told a small group of residents at the Sullivan County Government Center on September 13 that the reason is simple: the scanners are more secure, more reliable and they cost less the DREs.

New York is a year behind the rest of the country in choosing new voting machines. The federal government passed the Help America Vote Act in 2002, which mandated that all states upgrade their voting systems by September 2006. New York State lawmakers did not make the deadline. But they have committed to replacing the old lever machines by September 2007. And the election commissioners of all 62 counties will separately decide the types of systems that will be used in their individual counties. Lipari said those decisions will likely be made in the next four months.

He is, therefore, traversing the state, extolling the virtues of scanner systems and pointing out the drawbacks of the DRE system, which have been widely reported over the past couple of years.

As recently as September 13, three professors from Princeton University released a report on a DRE voting machine made by Diebold, concluding that it is “vulnerable to malicious software that could steal votes with little risk of detection.”

Dave Byrd, a Diebold president, challenged the methodology of the study and said that the particular system in question was an old one that would not be used in the upcoming election.

But complaints about DRE systems are widespread. In the wake of the controversial presidential vote in Ohio in 2004, Congressman John Conyers released a report prepared by the house judiciary committee staff that found numerous faults with the voting there, including the performance of DRE systems. There were 93,000 so-called spoiled ballots in Ohio, which means that 93,000 voters stood on line, and then decided not to cast a vote for either presidential candidate.

Many observers who have been studying the voting machine issue said it is entirely possible that DRE hackers were behind at least some of those spoiled ballots. And Ohio is not alone.

In Miami, FL, after Dade County officials had already spent more that $24 million on DRE technology, election supervisor Lester Sola, citing security and reliability issues, has recommended scrapping the entire system and replacing it with paper ballots and scanners.

Lipari argued that New York should learn from the mistakes of other states.

The big problem with DREs, according to Lipari, is that no one can know exactly what went on in the computer once a vote is cast. So, if hacking is taking place, it is very likely that no one would ever discover it.

Even paper trails are no guarantee of accuracy. The paper receipts printed by most DRE systems are small and hard to read, like a supermarket receipt. Therefore, in states where the systems are already running, up to 65 percent of voters don’t bother to confirm their votes, which defeats the purpose of the paper trail. Additionally, these little slips of paper would make for a rather difficult recount, if one was ever needed.

With a DRE system, a voter touches the screen to cast a ballot. Lipari is uncomfortable with the fact that in this setup, computers perform three separate functions: they record the votes, they count the votes and they store the votes.

With the scanner systems, computers perform only one function.

With a paper ballot/optical scanner system, the voter fills out a form in a privacy booth, puts the form in a privacy sleeve, walks to a centrally located scanner and feeds the ballot into it. In this system, the computer, or scanner, performs only one function: it counts the vote. The ballot, once cast, is stored as a paper ballot in detachable bins, which are positioned under the scanning device.

There are other advantages. As everyone knows, computers don’t always work exactly as they’re supposed to. They break down, stop working and develop quirks. If a DRE system breaks down, the voting stops until the computer is repaired or replaced. If a scanner breaks down, voting continues on paper ballots, which are fed into the scanner once it is repaired or replaced.

Moreover, according to Lipari, each lever machine in New York would need to be replaced by one or possibly two DRE systems, while just one scanner system could do the work of several lever machines. Lipari said the cost for Sullivan County to purchase DREs would range from $913,000 to $1,763,000. The cost to purchase scanners would be $687,000.

There would also be a savings in storing the scanners over the DREs. Both systems require climate-controlled storage. But because the scanners can be detached from the bins beneath them, and because there would be far fewer of them than the DREs, storage costs would be far less with the scanner systems.

According to Lipari, the vendors who sell the DREs also sell the scanners, but they stand to make more profit from selling the DREs. Therefore, in many cases when making presentations to officials, the vendors downplay, ignore or even omit the scanners altogether.

The scanner technology has been around for about 20 years, and in the upcoming election in November, nearly 50 percent of the precincts in the country will be using paper ballot and optical scanner technology.

Sullivan County Board of Election Commissioner Fran Thalmann said she and the other commissioner have seen demonstrations of various systems, but have not had time to discuss the merits of the various technologies. She said further that the commissioners can’t make any decisions until the various systems have been certified for use in the state by officials in Albany. That has not yet happened, and she did not know when it will.