GILROY
– Voters will be on the cutting edge when they take to the polls
Tuesday, joining cities such as Sunnyvale, Cupertino and Palo Alto
– all readily identifiable with Silicon Valley technology – in
using new touch-screen voting machines.
GILROY – Voters will be on the cutting edge when they take to the polls Tuesday, joining cities such as Sunnyvale, Cupertino and Palo Alto – all readily identifiable with Silicon Valley technology – in using new touch-screen voting machines.
Although the Santa Clara County Registrar’s Office has spent a year trying to ease voters into the new voting method, some worry that any computer glitch in the chad-free system could spell doom in a Gilroy election many believe could be close.
Mayor Tom Springer, who is a senior software programmer for IBM, said he worries about the digital voting method because machines are vulnerable to tampering, lack a paper trail and operate on proprietary software that has not been audited for accuracy by a third party. His nightmare scenario involves a machine losing its flash memory and not being able to produce or print out voting results, while a few dozen votes separate City Council candidates.
“This is what we in the business would call a field test. They didn’t want to do a test run during a presidential election so they’re doing one now,” Springer said. “This is new technology, and we all know how new technology can sometimes behave.
“These are personal computers with touch-screen technology, and I hope they all work fine,” Springer said. “I just would have preferred a system with a paper audit trail, and I would have liked to have seen more testing.”
A federal appeals court dismissed a lawsuit seeking to ban electronic voting machines that don’t print paper records for voters to inspect. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that electoral fraud can never be “completely eliminated” no matter what voting method is used.
Sequoia Voting Systems, the company that won a multi-year contract to supply the county with touch-screen machines, first demonstrated the technology at polling places in the November 2002 election.
After voters turned in their traditional punch-card ballots in that election, they were encouraged to try out a touch-screen machine. Sequoia representatives also brought the touch-screen machines to this year’s Garlic Festival where patrons cast votes for things like best and worst food.
Sequoia spokesman Alfie Charles admits the new system is not entirely foolproof, but says it’s more secure than the old paper-based system.
“The bottom line is there are fewer points of failure in a computerized system than a paper system,” Charles said.
Charles said the machines can withstand a power surge, have backup memory and store results on cartridges that can be read by another machine in the event the initial voting machine stops working.
Charles said Sequoia is working on creating an auditable paper trail by printing each voter’s results on a document the voter could check before exiting the polling place. Poll workers would keep the printout with the digital records.
However, the federal and state government must certify such a printing system before it is used in an election.
The current touch-screen machine looks and functions much like a bank automated teller machine. To use the machines, voters are given a card they insert into the machine, and the touch-screen system activates. A ballot appears on the screen and voters make selections by touching the circle next to their candidate’s name.
If a voters selects incorrectly, they are given an opportunity to correct the error. Voters also can review their entire list of entries after completing a ballot.
The program is available in five different languages: English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese and Tagalog.
The machines cost the county nearly $19 million.
For a demonstration of the new voting system, visit the registrar’s Web site at www.sccvote.org. Use the “Voting Just Got Easier” link.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
