Scouring the Screens And the Scanners
Election Officials Check and Re-Check Equipment to Try to Head Off Trouble
By Miranda S. Spivack
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 9, 2008; B01
 

Adam Bigenho, tech guy for the Montgomery County Board of Elections, spent part of yesterday training election judges how to match up computer plugs at polling places Monday night as they prepare for the next day's primary.

"If something is wrong Monday night, it's a problem. If something is wrong Tuesday, it's a crisis," said Bigenho, 24, one of hundreds of ground troops in a massive mobilization by local officials to ensure that all systems are good to go for Tuesday's Potomac Primary.

Across the District, Maryland and Virginia, election board employees are testing an array of voting machines and computerized voter check-in systems, conducting last-minute training, updating software and completing low-tech tasks such as replacing batteries and stockpiling emergency paper ballots.

The big question: Will everything be working smoothly, especially the touch-screen systems that have caused problems before?

Officials were optimistic as they completed their tuneups of the touch-screen voting machines that will be in wide use across Maryland and in about half of Virginia's jurisdictions. In the District, paper ballots read by optical scanners are the system of choice, with touch-screen machines used only for disabled voters or those who don't want to use the paper and scanners, said D.C. election spokesman Bill O'Field.

But this could be the end of the road for the touch screens, which resemble automated teller machines.

Once thought to be the panacea for Florida's hanging chads after the 2000 presidential contest, they are now cited by voter security experts and advocacy groups as a symbol of voting gone awry because of stories about machines crashing and questions about their susceptibility to hackers. California ditched most of them before this week's Super Tuesday contests, and Colorado hopes to get rid of them by November.

Locally, Maryland and Virginia are likely to return to the paper and scanner system in the next few years. Advocates for a system with a paper trail say the paper and scanner systems are more secure and easier to double check than the touch-screen equipment.

In Maryland's primary two years ago, there were tales of machine meltdowns, missing computer cards and a voter check-in system that frequently crashed. The problems helped unleash a movement to get rid of the touch-screen system in Maryland.

Ross Goldstein, Maryland's deputy election chief, said those problems have been ironed out.

"Voters should know that this system has been deployed successfully since 2002 with no credible claim of tampering," Goldstein said.

In Virginia, about 40 percent of voters will be using touch screens. James Alcorn, a policy adviser at the State Board of Elections, said that because the state does not use a single system, it is difficult for the entire voting apparatus to go down at once or to be susceptible to computer hackers.

"I like to say that we have security through diversity," he said.

Fairfax County election chief Margaret K. Luca says she is hopeful that the county's touch screens will efficiently handle the crowds.

"The majority of voters do like them," she said. "It is very unfortunate that a small segment of the population that are very suspicious of them is able to rule the day."

In Alexandria, Tom Parkins, general registrar, said a problem in November 2006 with truncated screens that cut off portions of candidates' names was fixed more than a year ago. The system has worked well ever since, he said.

But advocates of paper trail systems, such as Robert Ferraro of SaveOurVotes, a Maryland watchdog group, are among the worried.

Recalling contests two years ago in Montgomery and Prince George's counties, Ferraro said he is not convinced that Tuesday will go as smoothly as officials predict. His group plans to deploy 10 to 20 volunteers to roam polling places to see how voters and machines are managing.

"There are all sorts of things that can go wrong and do happen, sometimes on a limited basis. And there is always the problem that it is a paperless system and there is no way to really check the results," Ferraro said.

Ferraro said the focus will be on precincts in the 4th Congressional District, where the presidential primaries and a hotly contested Democratic primary race between Rep. Albert R. Wynn and his leading opponent, Donna Edwards, are expected to spur heavy voter turnout. There were reports two years ago of missing memory cards and other problems, but officials in Prince George's county, which makes up most of the district, say they have resolved those issues.

Ivy Main, policy director for the watchdog group New Era for Virginia, said one big downside to touch screens is that it's hard to know when they aren't working properly.

"If we had a problem with the machines' counts, we probably won't know it. Unless there is a real meltdown in which you get wildly unpredicted results that show that the machines aren't recording votes accurately, you aren't likely to know it," Main said.

The Maryland branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, responding to a complaint from Rebecca Wilson, a voting judge in Prince George's, was conducting last-minute negotiations to press election officials to make sure that voters know they cannot avoid using the machines just because they don't like them.

The state has said that paper ballots can be used under certain circumstances, such as when voters show up at the wrong polling place, but not simply because voters say they don't want to use the technology.

Montgomery County expects to have trained about 3,200 election judges by Monday. The hourly pay is about $10 to $15 for work that really begins the night before when poll workers set up the machines, examine material from the county election board and then run home to sleep before reporting to duty about 6 a.m.

At yesterday's training session in Rockville, Olubunmi Momott, a pharmacist who became a U.S. citizen in 2003, was listening carefully to the instructions. It will be her first time as an election judge.

"I feel strongly about voting. One vote might make a huge difference," said Momott, a native of Nigeria.

Staff writer Kirstin Downey contributed to this report.