BOE to recommend voting machines Jan. 13
We'll have a version of this brief in Saturday's paper. Have a safe and happy new year, everybody.
GREENSBORO — The Guilford County Board of Elections will pick new voting machines Jan. 13, according to county elections director George Gilbert.
The elections board will meet at noon at the Old County Courthouse, 301 W. Market St. in Greensboro.
The recommendation will then go to the county commissioners, who are expected to vote on the proposal at their Jan. 19 meeting.
The county must buy new voting equipment now that new state regulations require all machines to produce a "paper trail" of votes.
Guilford has been using touch-screen voting machines, but a group of voting-rights advocates favor paper-based optical-scan machines.
At this point, only one voting machine vendor, Election Systems and Software, will demonstrate its equipment at a Jan. 12 public forum now that Diebold Election Systems has declined to sell its machines in North Carolina.
ES&S is now the only vendor eligible to sell voting equipment in North Carolina.
Both touch-screen and optical-scan machines will be demonstrated at the forum inside the Old County Courthouse from 5 to 7 p.m.
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Thwarting democracy in Guilford County
How bad is the system that Mr. Gilbert wishes to foist off on Guilford voters? Pretty bad.
On July 29, 2005 it was reported that certification of the Diebold TSx GEMS v. 1.18.22 had been denied by the Secretary of State, Bruce McPherson. The initial report told of a 10% failure rate due to jammed printers and computer "crashes".
Just 5 days later, the newspapers reported that the failures were twice as bad as originally reported, and the failures were not centered in the printers but were instead software issues. Of the 96 voting machines tested, 19 failed with a total of 21 crashes resulting in a blue screen and messages about an "illegal operation" or a "fatal exception error." Also, 10 machines had a total of 11 printer jams. Nearly one-third of the test machines failed in one way or another.
Now this is not the exact model Mr. Gilbert is planning on buying, but it is a similar model from another vendor who has yet to field test the model. It issues the "toilet paper" roll for storing ballots (instead of printing discrete ballots), which is a major headache when they jam or must be counted by hand.
A NC election director with 17 years experience and well regarded by his peers explained the problems caused by this type of DRE/paper hybrid to the NC House Committee on Election Law back in August:
I want you all to at least see one time what you’re looking at. (He holds up long tape.) This is a voter verifiable paper tape produced from one of the vendors that is currently having their system certified. Here’s a single ballot. This ballot over here contains 55 votes, and so a fairly good-sized roll of paper. I’m not sure now we would handle it if we had to do a manual recount, but I’m sure we would find a way. I would have 3,545 of those tapes that size if I had had this system in place
Can you see the headache that would be caused by 3500+ rolls of tape in the event of a recount?
We are going to pay good money for a seriously defective system? A system that will cost more money to operate than the more reliable optical-scan systems?
Why would Mr. Gilbert not listen to a election director with so much experience and forgo such a troublesome and expensive system in favor of a proven system like optical scan? I don't know, perhaps Mr. Gilbert can ask the Mr. Gilbert I quoted above that question? He was the one testifying before the Election Law Committee.
It seems clear to me that having lost the fight to keep electronic voting machines paperless, Mr. Gilbert is going to do all he can to thwart the intent of the law by buying a system that will fail badly, in hopes of discrediting paper once and for all.
Some people ascribe sinister motives to Mr. Gilbert's actions, but I discount this view utterly. It seems to me that Mr. Gilbert has invested way too much of his ego in being right and is prepared
http://blackboxvoting.com/s9/index.php?/archives/8-Thwarting-democracy-in-Guilford-County.html
Posted on December 30, 2005 8:49 PM