New voting machines hit snag

Molly Ball

Monday, July 12, 2004 | 10:54 a.m.

The machines Nevada voters will use to cast their ballots in the September primary and the November election still aren't ready, alarming election officials who say they are already under immense strain.

Nevada plans to be the first state in America to use a device that keeps a paper record of electronic votes. But the device is taking longer than expected to go through the federal certification process.

The independent testing companies that are vetting the machines and their software were expected to approve them a month ago, Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said on Wednesday.

"Each time for four consecutive weeks, they've said, 'We found one minor problem; fix that and you'll be ready,' " Lomax said. "Then they say, 'No, we found another minor problem.' We're pretty frustrated down here."

Nevada is caught in the wake of the sweeping federal law changes after the voting mess in Florida in 2000 that left the outcome of the presidential election on hold for more than a month.

The debacle led to federal legislation to update and standardize voting in the states, notably by mandating electronic voting machines to avoid the uncertainty of "hanging chads" on punch-card ballots.

Now it is crunch time. The election, which promises to be a contentious one, is fast approaching.

Nevada, for its part, is trying to go above and beyond the rest of the country by pioneering innovative voting methods. But the complications of new machines and new regulations combine with a state system that was designed in the rural past. As a result, Lomax is stressed out.

The software for the new voting machines was finally approved on Thursday, just as Lomax said the county was about to give up on it and instead use programming from 2002, which would have made operations more labor-intensive.

As for hardware, the machines' final federal test, which involves bombarding them with radio waves, is scheduled for Monday, said Alfie Charles, vice president of business development at Sequoia Voting Systems, which makes the machines.

Voting machines must be certified at the federal and state level based on a battery of tests to make sure they count votes accurately, won't break down and aren't susceptible to fraud.

Lomax said Clark County does its own unofficial tests to understand how voting machines will perform under the county's unique conditions. The delays "are definitely cutting into our ability to test" the new technology, Lomax said. "We are normally well into our testing process at this time."

With 400,000 people expected to vote in Clark County in November's general election, "we don't just load the software on Election Day and say, 'Gee, I hope it works,' " he said. "We want to be absolutely sure when we go into the election that we have a good handle on everything."

The testing process is rigorous, but election officials are confident the new voting machines will pass, said Steve George, spokesman for Secretary of State Dean Heller.

"They have some little bugs that they are trying to iron out, but I know they're getting very close," George said last week.

"They are coming down to the time when they need to get it (testing) completed," he acknowledged. Despite the delays in approval, Sequoia has begun manufacturing the machines -- currently, they exist only as a prototype -- and has promised to ship them to Nevada by the beginning of August.

Sequoia has a $9 million contract with the state to provide nearly 2,000 new machines and more than 3,000 printers, as well as technical support. Almost all the money is federal funds, George said.

Heller decided to make Nevada the first state to use "voter-verifiable paper audit trail" voting machines, which are touch-screen machines with an attached printer, George said. Heller has said he wanted Nevada to have the country's most secure elections.

After voters make their selections, the machine prints a receipt behind a window. Voters can look at the receipts but not touch them. The receipts are kept as a back-up to the electronic votes, designed to verify that the electronic total is correct.

"The printed receipt allows voters to review their selections on the screen and on paper," Charles, of Sequoia, said. "That's important for voter confidence in the new systems, especially as questions have been raised about some companies in the industry."

In particular, Diebold Election Systems has faced several lawsuits around accusations that its voting machines' software is vulnerable. A federal appeals court in California temporarily put last year's gubernatorial recall election on hold because of questions about Diebold's machines.

Computer scientists and others concerned about computerized voting say a paper trail is the answer. "There's a lot of legislation in Congress saying this needs to be a necessary component of all (electronic voting) machines," George said.

Four states, including Nevada, have banned paperless voting, and fifteen others have introduced legislation. But only Nevada will be ready to roll out printed receipt technology in 2004, George said.

In Clark County, where more than 70 percent of Nevada's votes are cast, the printer machines are being phased in: 740 touch-screen machines with printers and 2,186 older push-button computer voting machines will be used. The push-button machines are paperless and have been used without apparent problems since 1996. Every polling place will have at least one printer machine that voters have the option to use, Lomax said.

Elsewhere in the state, every voting machine will be a touch-screen with a printer.

"States and counties across the country would like to learn from Nevada," Charles said. "Clark County and State of Nevada election officials have always been on the cutting edge of election technology generally."

Clark County was one of the first in the U.S. to use computer voting machines, in 1996, and the county leads the nation in early voting: about half of voters vote in the two-week period before Election Day.

The state also offers "no-fault" absentee voting, meaning anyone can request an absentee ballot without giving a reason.

Pioneering the printout machines will "showcase how advanced Nevada is," Charles said.

While Clark County has been ahead of the curve in technology, it is behind schedule this election.

The delays in getting the new machines are exacerbating what was already a tense election cycle. "This is a really tough election for us," Lomax said.

Last month, a group circulating a petition to put initiatives on the ballot claimed its members were harassed by state employees and asked for, and won, an extension of the petition deadline over the pleas of election officials.

Lomax testified before District Judge Ken Cory as to whether an extension was feasible.

"We are stretched to the absolute limit," Lomax said then. "We have gone to the Legislature three times to get more time and we can't get them to address this issue."

Lomax told the judge that Clark County was on the brink of an electoral crisis: "I'm afraid at some point there is going to be a recount or a contested election that will prove that it's (the process) broken," he said.

Ronda Moore, deputy secretary of state for elections, was even more emphatic, telling Cory, "The general election is hanging by a thread."

Moore said registrars and clerks in Nevada's counties were "freaking out." Election workers, she said, are "disbelieving and horrified and afraid ... that they are going to fail."

In interviews, Lomax said Clark County has outgrown the state's election laws, while changes at the federal level have made the situation even more stressful.

For example, with the state's primary on Sept. 7 and early voting for the Nov. 2 election beginning Oct. 16, county election workers must work nonstop to get sample and absentee ballots printed and mailed in time.

"The size of our county has grown to the point that it takes us so long to print everything that even printing round the clock we can't tolerate any delays," Lomax said.

For example, election laws allow primary votes to be challenged and recounts to be called. If that happened, the system would collapse and the general election probably could not be held as scheduled, Lomax said.

The challenges to the county's election preparations are many and varied, Lomax said. First is the sheer size and complexity of running an election in the country's 17th largest county: with all the overlapping districts of different elected officials, the coming election will require 338 different ballot styles in Clark County.

Because this is a presidential election year, more people are registering to vote -- 7,500 last week alone -- and turnout will be higher than in a non-presidential year, Lomax said.

In addition to the printers, the state's absentee ballots will be done in a new way, using optical scan technology, the method used to grade standardized tests.

And due to a calendrical quirk, this year there is one less week between the primary and the general election than there was last year.

Most of Clark County's election headaches come from Nevada's late primary, which leaves only a short window between when candidates for many races are selected and the general election.

Lomax said the novel election methods the county and state have adopted make poll workers' jobs easier and voting more convenient. Early voting, for instance, gives voters an extra two weeks to make it to the polls. And with half of the county's voters voting early, only half as many poll workers and voting machines are needed on Election Day itself.

The new voting machines being used this year could also make voting smoother, especially for Spanish speakers. The touch-screen devices can switch from English to Spanish in a flash, unlike the push-button machines. For that reason, the limited number of touch-screen devices in Clark County will be concentrated in heavily Hispanic areas.

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