With Ohio's March 2 primary approaching, officials' criticism over the security of electronic voting machines has become louder, with nine counties openly defying Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell.
Electronic voting machines are required to replace paper ballots by November's election under the Help Americans Vote Act. Blackwell has had an extension of that requirement approved to 2006.
State Sen. Teresa Fedor, D-Toledo, said there is no reason to rush installing the machines.
We do not have federal statutes and guidelines in place for this technology
she said. Therefore the industry is driving the bus. The industry should not be in control of this. I hold the federal government responsible.
Lucas County, in Fedor's district, was one of nine counties that refused to pick a voting machine by the Jan. 15 deadline set by Blackwell. Clinton, Cuyahoga, Hamilton, Highland, Montgomery, Preble, Summit and Wyandot Counties, some of Ohio's most populous, also did not pick a voting machine by the deadline.
Most counties that did settle on a voting machine, including Athens County, chose the Diebold AccuVote-TSX. This model has come under attack in recent months in reports from Johns Hopkins University, Science Applications International Corporation and RABA Technologies that have revealed security risks in the AccuVote that include potential for hacking, pulling of vital wires off the machine and physical tampering with hardware.
Blackwell also sponsored a report from CompuWare Corporation that covered security concerns from the AccuVote as well as machines from Election Systems and Software, Hart InterCivic and Sequoia Voting Systems.
Ohio has $133 million allocated in federal funding to purchase the machines.
Carlo LoParo, Blackwell's spokesman, said the companies have until April 1 to fix problems. Upon meeting the deadline, the machines will be retested. No machines will be purchased until all security risks are met.
We have conducted the nation's first security tests and vendors are holding up that assessment he said. The process is not being rushed
the systems will be secure. Senator Fedor is incorrect in her assessment.
Susan Gwinn, head of the Athens County Board of Elections, said she favored Election Systems and Software's machines over the AccuVote, but was the only board member to vote against Diebold's system.
The system was less likely to have a problem
she said.
Both systems use a voter smart card that is put into the machines. In the Diebold system, voters put the card in themselves, while the Election Systems and Software machine has a poll worker put in the card for the voter, Gwinn said.
Fedor has introduced a bill in the Ohio Senate requiring all voting machines to have a voter-verified paper audit. With the paper audit system, voters view a paper record of their vote and confirm their choices with elections workers.
U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Lisbon, said he is considering seeking a court injunction to prevent use of machines without a paper audit.
Without a paper trail
what happens if there's a recount? he said. It just spits out what it already spit out.
Machines can be retrofitted for paper audits, LoParo said, but there would not be any federal funding for it unless Congress approved such a measure. U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., has drafted such a bill.
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Jeffrey Fitzwater
