[EM] Two election stories

[DEMOREP1 at aol.com]

Conflicting Answers to Voting Flaws

By ROBERT TANNER
.c The Associated Press
  
NEW YORK (AP) - Voting sounds so simple. 

One person, one vote. The candidate with the most votes wins. For president, 
the Electoral College balances out states big and small. 

The tangled reality became apparent in last fall's overtime election. A few 
people - enough to sway a close race - invariably make mistakes and spoil 
their votes. The problem is, some machines seem to encourage more errors than 
others. 

The answer, clearly, is to find machines that confuse the fewest voters. But 
that isn't so simple, as state legislatures and Congress are learning in 
their search for a more trustworthy election system. 

It's hard to pick one voting system over another because little analysis of 
voting technology exists, and the reports that are available often conflict. 

Modernization is the new watchword. But some studies have found low-tech 
voting methods - mechanical levers and paper ballots - work better than 
state-of-the-art systems. 

Optical scan technology, where voters darken circles as in standardized 
school tests, has support in Florida, Illinois, Arizona and more. But a 
Georgia study of optical scan voting found places with large minority 
populations had much higher numbers of uncounted votes than the rest of the 
state. 

Some think computers are the answer. But the latest ATM-style electronic 
machines turned out errors nearly as often as the punch-cards at the center 
of the Florida recount, according to a statistical review of the past four 
presidential elections. 

``There isn't good comparative data,'' said Susan King Roth, an Ohio State 
University design professor who has studied election equipment problems. 
``You almost need something like a Consumer Reports for voting systems.'' 

Votes can go uncounted for a number of reasons. Machines break down, ballots 
confuse voters, poll workers add wrong. But experts say the most frequent 
cause is that people in the polling booths make mistakes. 

There are overvotes (when a person casts two votes for one race, or a machine 
counts two votes because of a stray mark on the ballot) and undervotes (when 
a person accidentally erases a vote, or starts but doesn't complete a vote as 
with Florida's dimpled chads). 

To make things murkier, some people intentionally leave votes blank. 

Nationally, uncounted votes are estimated at about 2 percent in presidential 
years - more than the difference that separated Al Gore from George W. Bush 
in the popular vote nationwide. 

Florida estimated its uncounted votes at 2.9 percent, much more then Bush's 
slim margin of victory in that decisive state. Georgia's was 3.5 percent. 

Even smaller numbers of uncounted votes are unacceptably high, experts say. 

``Talk to people in the civil engineering business, who design drainage 
projects and dams,'' said Michael Traugott, a research scientist at the 
University of Michigan's Center for Political Studies. ``They have this 
concept of designing for a 50-year-flood or a 100-year-flood. This was a 
once-in-a-lifetime election.'' 

And the system couldn't handle it, turning what should have been a simple 
election into a series of complex arguments before state and federal courts. 

In Georgia, officials took a postelection look at the results in their state 
and found some troubling trends. 

Secretary of State Cathy Cox discovered precincts with the largest minority 
populations had a higher rate of uncounted votes regardless of the technology 
used, but that optical scan machines made the problem worse. 

``We believe the data we have makes a compelling argument that further 
deployment of optiscan systems would be bad policy, and could perhaps even be 
considered a decision that disenfranchises minority voters,'' Cox told a U.S. 
Senate committee studying election reform earlier this month. 

In contrast, a study of national election returns from the past four 
presidential elections drew very different conclusions. Academics believe the 
joint study by the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology was the first of its kind. 

Yes, punch-cards were found to produce the highest number of uncounted votes. 
But electronic voting systems were just as bad - though researchers insisted 
the technology showed the most promise. 

Optical scan, the Caltech-MIT study found, was one of the better 
technologies, with uncounted votes making up 2.3 percent of all ballots cast 
with that system. Votomatic punch-cards came in at 2.9 percent, and 
electronic voting was at 3 percent. The best were paper ballots (2 percent) 
and mechanical lever machines (1.6 percent). 

The study has been criticized, however, by analysts and industry officials 
who found electronic voting to be as reliable as optical scan. 

Policy-makers, in Congress and in the states, need guidance. Experts agree 
legislators should look at which equipment work best, how people interact 
with voting machines and what steps election administrators can take to 
educate voters before ballots are cast. 

``The promise of December is that hey, higher technology solves our 
problem,'' said Chris Thomas, Michigan's election director. ``The reality is 
it might help, but it's not going to solve them. You're going to find it's 
the human element.'' 

On the Net: 

Caltech-MIT study: http://www.vote.caltech.edu 

Georgia study: http://www.sos.state.ga.us/pressrel/2000-election-report.htm 

Federal Election Commission: http://www.fec.gov/elections.html 

AP-NY-03-18-01 1337EST
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Californians Prefer Touch-Screen Voting in Statewide Survey; Recent Poll 
Reflects Desire to Use Public Funding to Purchase Electronic Units
  
OAKLAND, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 5, 2001--Californians prefer 
touch-screen voting systems by wide margins over other voting technologies, 
and they support the use of public funds to acquire this technology, 
according to a statewide survey of registered voters. 

The telephone survey, conducted by Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin & Associates, 
included 600 registered voters throughout California. The survey queried 
voters on the effectiveness of punch card ballots, optical scan units, 
Internet voting and touch-screen equipment. 

When asked which system was best overall in terms of accuracy, speed and 
reliability, 41 percent chose touch-screen voting units as their first 
choice. Punch cards came in a distant second with 24 percent, while just over 
1 in 10 voters chose either paper ballots (13%) or optical scan cards (11%). 
Only 6 percent of voters opted for Internet voting. 

"This survey shows significant support for the use of touch-screen voting 
technology and it's consistent with the feedback that we are receiving across 
the country," said Peter Cosgrove, president and chief executive officer of 
Sequoia Voting Systems Inc. 

The survey also found that California voters support by a two-to-one margin 
the use of $150 million in state matching funds to allow most counties to 
obtain touch-screen voting systems for the 2002 election. Support for state 
funding for touch-screen voting machines crosses party lines as strong 
majorities of Democrats (63%), Republicans (53%) and independents (68%) 
supporting the use of state matching funds to get this new technology up and 
running by next year's elections. 

The survey was commissioned by Sequoia Voting Systems, whose product line 
includes touch-screen as well as optical scan voting systems. Sequoia's AVC 
Edge, which functions much like an ATM, was successfully used in Riverside 
County for the November 2000 presidential election, where it became the 
largest Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) system in the nation. 

In a special Feb. 6 election for California's 65th Assembly District, the 
same voting system tallied 21,408 votes in only 77 minutes to decide the 
winner. Sequoia's touch-screen voting system is expected to save Riverside 
County taxpayers more than $600,000 per year in paper and printing costs. 

Sequoia Voting Systems, an Oakland-based subsidiary of Jefferson Smurfit 
Group, provides election products, software and services to jurisdictions 
around the world. Its primary product lines include the AVC Edge Touch-Screen 
DRE, the AVC Advantage Full-Face DRE, the Optech Optical Scan system, 
Integrity Voter Registration Software and supporting software and hardware.  

Sequoia has more than 20,000 DRE machines in use throughout the United 
States, making it the nation's largest supplier of electronic voting systems. 
Sequoia invites you to visit the company's Web site at www.sequoiavote.com. 

CONTACT:  

Stoorza Communications  

Jeff Crider, 909/781-2240 

KEYWORD: CALIFORNIA 

BW0447  MAR 05,2001 

11:47 PACIFIC  

14:47  EASTERN