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."