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<http://ap.tbo.com>

Aug 28, 2004


   Razor-Thin Election in Calif. County Raises Questions Over
   Electronic Voting

By Rachel Konrad
The Associated Press

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) - County election officials have been among the 
staunchest advocates of electronic voting, insisting that computers are 
as reliable as paper ballots.

But a dispute over a razor-thin election here suggests that important 
electronic data might not exist, making accurate recounts impossible in 
many states.

Linda Soubirous, a candidate for the Riverside County board of 
supervisors, lost a chance to stage a runoff by fewer than 50 votes. 
When Soubirous asked to look at the computer disks and other electronic 
records kept during the election, county officials refused.

Critics of electronic voting say that what happened during the March 
primary in the sprawling county east of Los Angeles should be a wake-up 
call for the 50 million Americans eligible to vote electronically in 
November.

Undocumented software glitches, hackers, mechanical errors or deleted 
ballots in only a few counties could have huge implications in a 
presidential election likely to be a cliffhanger. More than 100,000 
paperless terminals have been installed across the nation, particularly 
in California, Maryland, Georgia and the battleground states of Florida, 
New Mexico and Nevada.

"This isn't about Riverside - it's about our nation," said Soubirous, 
42, who sued Riverside County and its registrar of voters, Mischelle 
Townsend, an outspoken booster of electronic voting systems.

For years, Townsend touted the machines as cost-effective, foolproof and 
as safe as paper ballots - but she resigned unexpectedly in July, saying 
she needed more time with her family.

Soubirous' case is prompting demands for more transparency into election 
software. Like other manufacturers, Sequoia Voting Systems Inc., which 
sold $14 million in equipment to Riverside in 1999, uses proprietary 
software and operates with little federal oversight.

The case, scheduled to go before a judge in Indio, Calif., Sept. 8, 
comes less than two months after Florida elections officials revealed 
that audit logs from the contested 2002 gubernatorial primary were lost 
in computer crashes. Officials in Miami-Dade County said later that 
backup copies of the data were simply misplaced, but the mishap stoked 
suspicion coast to coast.

"Right now, there's basically no way to know how accurate an election 
was, and that's not good enough for a public office," said Jeremiah 
Akin, 29, a Riverside computer programmer. "We should all be very 
skeptical."

Soubirous' case hinges on vote tallies that began arriving in stacks of 
absentee ballots and computer memory cartridges in Riverside's central 
counting office the evening of March 2. Traditionally, the registrar 
publishes results on printouts and online, continuously updating them as 
new data arrive.

In the first printout, at 8:13 p.m., three-term incumbent Bob Buster had 
47 percent of the vote - shy of the majority needed to avoid a runoff.

Updates from the Sequoia AVC Edge touchscreens then stalled for more 
than an hour. During that time, Soubirous supporter Art Cassel spotted 
two Sequoia employees typing on a county computer.

When updates resumed about 9:15 p.m., Buster's lead had widened to 50.2 
percent of the vote. After 49,196 votes were logged, Buster finished by 
49 votes above 50 percent, narrowly avoiding a runoff.

Sequoia spokesman Alfie Charles said the Sequoia employees were given 
identification badges and access to the computers on Election Day simply 
to ensure that the vote tabulation proceeded smoothly. The original vote 
count was accurate, he said.

"As a technical matter, the election went very well," he said.

Soubirous, a registered nurse, paid more than $1,600 for a recount - but 
says she didn't get her money's worth. A re-examination of paper 
absentee ballots found 276 more votes, narrowing the margin for avoiding 
a runoff to 36 votes. But most of the voting took place electronically, 
and Townsend reproduced only the vote total delivered by each machine.

E-voting critics consider such numbers meaningless because they don't 
show whether software glitches or hacks resulted in misrecorded votes. 
They say a voter-verifiable paper ballot, missing from the vast majority 
of machines being deployed across the country, is a better way to prove 
voters' intentions.

Soubirous demanded to see audit logs, computer diskettes, internal 
memory cards, surveillance tapes from polling stations and other data 
Townsend touted as "checks and balances" that ensured the accuracy of 
paperless systems.

Attorneys representing Townsend responded that most of the items 
requested - including some electronic data from the voting machines and 
tabulation software - "do not exist" or "do not constitute 'relevant 
materials'" according to California election law. The registrar handed 
over only paper provisional ballots and some absentee ballots and 
envelopes.

Townsend, a 34-year county employee who said she retired to take care of 
her 93-year-old father as he recuperates from surgery, would not answer 
questions about the case.

As the new registrar, Barbara Dunmore assumes Townsend's place in the 
lawsuit and said the county probably wouldn't provide Soubirous with 
additional data.

"I'm not saying we don't want to open the books, but I need to learn why 
that information was preserved in the past before I make a 
recommendation about how we move forward," Dunmore said.

The March election wasn't the first to raise concerns about vote fraud 
among county residents.

In November 2000, Riverside became California's first county to install 
touchscreens in every precinct. A tax hike - rejected twice when voters 
were using optical scan equipment - unexpectedly passed.

An accountant in Riverside, Susan Marie Weber, became suspicious and 
sued Townsend and former Secretary of State Bill Jones, blasting 
Sequoia's closed system as "anathema to the one-person, one-vote basis 
of our representative government."

"We get more paperwork with a carryout order at McDonald's than when we 
go to the polls," said Weber, whose case was eventually dismissed.

The candidate who defeated Soubirous offered a harsher explanation for 
the outcry.

"This is sour grapes," Buster said. "My opponent is a publicity seeker 
who wants to stay in the news now so she can continue to run for 
elections."

Soubirous hopes her case gets more politicians interested in e-voting.

"If anyone recognized what happened to me in Riverside, they'd be 
appalled, whether they are Democrat or Republican," said Soubirous, a 
conservative Republican. "This is the foundation of our democracy here, 
not partisan politics."

AP-ES-08-28-04 1234EDT