When county residents step into the polling booth this November to cast their votes for city council, school board and special district board members, they’ll be using new electronic voting machines unanimously authorized last week by the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors.
Despite protests and warnings from a range of speakers at the board’s August 15 meeting — including David Dill, a prominent professor of computer science at Stanford and founder of the nonprofit Verified Voting Foundation — the supervisors approved the purchase of 2,100 voting machines manufactured by Hart InterCivic of Austin, Texas.
The machines will cost $10.5 million, though the county will pay only $1.5 million of that total.
San Mateo County Chief Elections Officer Warren Slocum defended the new machines, saying that they would simplify the jobs of election administrators, make it easier for the disabled to vote, and save the county about $1 million over the next four years.
But members of the public, who spoke for more than an hour during the hearing, raised concerns that the electronic machines would be more prone to error and fraud by the manufacturer or voting officials.
Mr. Slocum told the supervisors that he and his staff are “committed to setting the gold standard for the [electronic voting] approach.”
Disability access
The county needs to acquire the new machines because the existing optical scanners don’t comply with federal standards for disability access, Mr. Slocum said. The Hart systems will allow disabled citizens to vote in secrecy for the first time in county history, he said.In response to speaker comments, he acknowledged it would be possible to install just one Hart machine for the disabled at each polling station, and continue to use the existing optical-scan machines for other voters. That option, though, would be more costly and make it more difficult for polling officials to manage, he said.
Purchased in 1992, the optical scanning machines are outdated and also waste large amounts of paper because polling stations are required to have far more ballots — in three languages — available than are actually used.
With the new system, there is no need for a printed ballot, although voters will receive a paper printout recording their vote when they leave the poll station. In addition, each vote will be printed out for the county’s records, leaving a paper trail that officials will be able to check after the election.
Concerns about accuracy
A number of residents expressed concern about the accuracy of the Hart machines, known as eSlate, citing reports of electronic vote fraud, most notably in the 2004 presidential election.Some fear that the systems could be hacked or manipulated by the supplier or election officials, or that problems in the software or hardware could cause errors.
Mr. Slocum acknowledged that federal standards for electronic voting security are inadequate, but said that the county would work with private organizations to test the machines’ accuracy before using them.
Mr. Dill, the Stanford computer science professor, said he isn’t convinced that the new machines would be secure. His organization, Verified Voting Foundation, works to persuade states to use paper trails, but he said that the system, and even paper trails, are still untrustworthy and can be invalidated by minor operator errors.
Mr. Dill urged the county to hold off on the electronic machines until more is known about the technology. He advised that it continue using the current system or buy newer, less expensive scan machines in the meantime.
Accountability issues
Much of the supervisors’ deliberations revolved around the issue of whether Hart InterCivic would be held accountable for their machines in case voting errors occur.“If there are significant problems with the machines or the paper trails in the future, there will be a lot of people who were at that meeting who will be saying ‘I told you so,'” Mr. Dill said afterward.
The county’s contract with Hart allows for the appointment of an independent third party that could check machines for tampering and review the company’s software code.
Alan Dechert, president of the Open Voting Consortium, warned that the Hart machines might soon be outdated if the state or federal governments pass legislation requiring stricter standards for voting machines.
Dr. Katherine Forrest of Portola Valley, co-founder and director of operations for the Commonweal Institute, a Menlo Park think tank, raised the possibility that the county could face civil and criminal lawsuits if it doesn’t protect itself from liability.
Supervisor Mark Church said that he would create a subcommittee that would work with Mr. Slocum and concerned citizens to review the safety of the system.
Mr. Slocum pledged to consult with Mr. Dill as well as several voting organizations. “Today does not represent the end of our conversations about security practices,” he said.
Although the county plans to use the new machines in November, voters will still be able to request a paper ballot or vote absentee.
