Reply #23: TX: In high-tech e-voting age, glitches usually low-tech

[rumpel]

Austin American Statesman

Lack of training, shortage of workers, human error often the root of problems.
By Laylan Copelin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Six thousand ballots were cast and counted electronically this spring before the first Travis County voter stepped into a voting booth.

No, it was not the digital equivalent of Box 13, the "missing" South Texas ballot box that allowed a young Lyndon Johnson to squeak into the U.S. Senate in 1948. Instead, it was a test, just one of the many checks and balances that Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir uses to safeguard the ballot box in an electronic age.

"It's tedious and grueling," DeBeauvoir said of the process in which election workers cast thousands of test ballots over 12 hours. "But it's necessary."

Interest in ballot security has sizzled on the back burner this year as Texas passed a Jan. 1 federal deadline to put at least one electronic machine in every precinct. As some politicians, election lawyers and critics of electronic voting — the self-proclaimed "black box" crowd — warn of voter fraud, the problems so far have been more of the low-tech variety.

More times than not, it's the people — with a lack of training, a shortage of workers or human error — at the root of problems.

The push to improve the speed and accuracy of voting came from the hanging chads of the 2000 Bush-Gore presidential standoff in Florida. But a primary purpose behind the federal Helping America to Vote Act is also to put at least one electronic voting machine in every precinct so people with disabilities can easily vote.

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Rice University professor Dan Wallach is a computer security expert who is skeptical of electronic voting.

He said he has testified in election contests where he has found test votes — the kind Travis County used — wrongly included in election day totals. In another instance, Wallach said, election workers cleared out the electronic ballots from some machines to get ready for a runoff election, erasing the ability to double-check the election day returns.

Wallach said the state has contributed to the problems by barring the public from attending the state's initial review of electronic voting systems.

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/06/13vote.html