[EM] State Ordered to Replace Old Vote Machines

[DEMOREP1 at aol.com]

D- Another *hammer* order from the courts -- like Bush v. Gore, ___ U.S. ___ 
(2000).
-----
Los Angeles Times 
State Ordered to Replace Old Vote Machines 
By Henry Weinstein
February 14, 2002 

A federal judge in Los Angeles on Wednesday ruled that California has to 
replace outmoded punch-card voting machines by the 2004 presidential 
election. 

U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson's decision is the first ruling in 
the nation requiring the elimination of obsolete voting machines in the 
aftermath of the controversial 2000 presidential election. Similar suits 
are pending in a number of other states. 

The decision immediately affects nine California counties, including Los 
Angeles, which have about 8 million registered voters. Wilson rejected 
the position of California Secretary of State Bill Jones and several 
county voting officials who said that they did not have the millions of 
dollars needed to upgrade their systems and that it was not feasible to 
make a change until 2005. 

The judge issued a one-sentence order and attorneys said they 
anticipated he would provide a more detailed ruling later. A lawsuit 
over the machines had been set for trial Feb. 19. 

The ruling was hailed by Daniel Tokaji, an attorney for the American 
Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which last year filed the 
lawsuit seeking to compel elimination of the machines. 

"This landmark decision means that by 2004, 'hanging chad' machines will 
go the way of black-and-white TVs, eight-track tapes and the Edsel," 
Tokaji said. "It does what the secretary of state should have done years 
ago: upgrade the infrastructure of our democracy by providing a voting 
system fit for use in the 21st century." 

The ACLU attorney said he hopes that the plaintiffs can now work out a 
consent decree with Jones that would provide a plan for the transition 
to newer, high-tech machines. 

Jones conceded last September that two types of punch-card voting 
machines approved for use in California were "obsolete" and needed to be 
replaced. 

However, in December, Jones said that it would "invite disaster" if some 
of the state's large counties were required to change systems by the 
2004 presidential election. 

On Wednesday, Jones, who is running for governor in the Republican 
primary, said Judge Wilson "has set a deadline that may be impossible 
for counties to meet with advanced voting technology. Several counties 
will have to scale back plans to adopt state-of-the art technology to 
meet the new deadline." 

Jones also said that unless California voters pass Proposition 41--a 
$200-million bond measure that would provide 3-to-1 matching grants to 
California counties for the purchase of new election equipment--on March 
5, "many counties will be unable to purchase new systems at all." 

State May Appeal or Seek a Stay 

Jones spokesman Alfie Charles said the secretary of state would decide 
whether to appeal the ruling after consulting with county voting 
officials. Other political sources said they believe that Jones will ask 
for a stay of the ruling. 

Conny McCormack, Los Angeles County's registrar-recorder, predicted that 
"the ruling will throw our Los Angeles County election system into 
chaos." 

"Requiring us to procure, test and install a new system in less than two 
years precludes us from replacing punch cards with modern touch screens 
because there are no funds currently available from the federal, state 
or county government to do so," McCormack said. 

She said attempting to make a transition more rapidly than is feasible 
could lead to more tabulating errors in the next election. 

"The ultimate irony is this would be the exact opposite outcome of that 
sought by the plaintiffs," McCormack said. 

But Tokaji said evidence developed in the lawsuit, Common Cause vs. 
Jones, "shows that the nine affected California counties can easily 
upgrade their systems" in time for the 2004 presidential election. 

Los Angeles is the largest of the nine California counties that use the 
punch-card machines. 

In the November 2000 presidential election, 53.4% of California voters, 
including those in Los Angeles County, used machines for "pre-scored" 
punch cards, similar to those that created some of the problems with 
hanging and "pregnant" chads in Florida. Ballots cast using those 
machines accounted for 74.8% of all ballots that did not register a vote 
for president in California. 

The error rate for those machines was more than double that of any other 
system used in the state and three times as high as in Riverside County, 
which used high-tech touch-screen machines, according to the suit filed 
last April by the ACLU. 

The suit alleged that the wide variety of voting machines used in 
California resulted in sharply disparate levels of accuracy, with the 
consequence that a disproportionate number of votes are not counted in 
some counties--including Los Angeles. 

Moreover, the suit, filed on behalf of five nonprofit groups and eight 
voters, asserted that "a disproportionate number of African American, 
Latino and Asian American voters do not have their votes counted at 
all." 

Officials Admit There Are Problems 

Since the suit was filed, voting officials throughout the state have 
acknowledged there are problems with the punch-card machines and said 
they should be replaced, but have expressed reservations about how fast 
change can be made, primarily due to a lack of funds. 

McCormack said it would cost $90 million to $100 million to implement a 
touch-screen voting system in Los Angeles County. She said there are 
only four companies in California certified to make the machines. 

"It is incredibly difficult," she said, to make a machine with the seven 
languages now used in California elections--English, Spanish, Chinese, 
Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Tagalog. 

She said that if Proposition 41 passes, the county might get about $75 
million from the state. However, she said that the county would still 
have to pay a quarter of the project's costs, and that she had no idea 
where that $25 million would come from. 

McCormack said that when the county issued a request for proposals 
seeking bidders to make a limited number of such machines for an 
experiment in 2000, it drew only two bids. 

Al Fawcett, director of administrative services for the Sacramento 
County registrar of voters, also said that it would be difficult for 
that county to modernize its system in time for the next presidential 
election. 

"We are looking at a cost of $20 million to $30 million," Fawcett said. 
"There is no money and none on the horizon." 

In addition to Los Angeles and Sacramento counties, the outmoded systems 
are in use in Alameda, Mendocino, San Bernardino, San Diego, Santa 
Clara, Shasta and Solano counties. 

In December, the House of Representatives passed a bill which allocates 
$2.65 billion over three years to improve voting technology, education 
and training. A bill pending in the U.S. Senate would give the states 
$3.4 billion over five years for the same purpose. 

In addition to Common Cause, the AFL-CIO, the Chicano Federation of San 
Diego County, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the 
Southwest Voter Registration Project were plaintiffs in the suit.
---------
San Francisco Chronicle
Hanging chads on the way out 9 counties told they must replace punch 
cards by '04 
By Bob Egelko
February 14, 2002

A federal judge has ordered California to get rid of hanging chads 
before the 2004 presidential election, ruling that nine counties -- 
including Alameda, 

Santa Clara and Los Angeles -- must replace their punch-card voting 
machines with something more reliable. 

The ruling comes in a lawsuit filed by minority groups and voting-rights 
advocates, who say the current system discriminates against voters in 
counties with antiquated machines. It was announced yesterday. 

The nine counties are home to more than half the state's registered 
voters, and to two-thirds or more of its black and Latino voters. 
According to the suit, voters in those counties are more than twice as 
likely to have their votes go uncounted as voters in the other 49 
counties. 

Incompletely punched holes in the ballots, the result of voter confusion 
or flaws in the machines, produced the so-called hanging chads that 
marred the crucial November 2000 presidential recount in Florida. That 
state, one of four sued for voting machine disparities, is ahead of 
California in converting to more modern machines, said attorney Dan 
Tokaji of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. 

He said yesterday's ruling was the first in the nation to require a 
state to get rid of punch-card machines. 

"Because of this decision, voting in California will move out of the 
dark ages before the 2004 presidential election," said Brad Phillips, 
another attorney for the plaintiffs. 

U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson of Los Angeles said the machines had 
to be replaced by 2004, a year earlier than the timetable sought by 
Secretary of State Bill Jones, the state's top elections official. 
Jones, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor, said the 
ruling would cause problems. 

"It is time to move beyond the outdated chad-prone punch-card ballots," 
Jones said. "Unfortunately, the shortened time frame outlined by the 
judge will jeopardize the smooth conduct of elections and will prevent 
taxpayers from getting the best bang for their buck." 

He said some counties had told him they would be unable to install the 
most up-to-date system, which uses an ATM-like electronic touch-screen, 
until July 2005. That means they will have to spend money on other 
systems for 2004 and delay or cancel plans for touch-screens, Jones 
said. 

Countywide touch-screen voting is now available only in Riverside 
County. Many others, including San Francisco, use optically scanned 
paper ballots, a system that is considered more reliable than paper 
ballots. 

The state will provide $200 million in matching funds for upgrades of 
local voting systems if voters approve Proposition 41 on the March 5 
ballot. Each dollar spent by a county would be matched by $3 of bond 
funds. 

The ACLU's Tokaji said the bond money should be enough to install touch- 
screens in all, or nearly all, of the precincts in the nine counties. 
Congress also appears likely to approve some federal funding, he added. 

The nine counties with punch-card machines are Alameda, Los Angeles, 
Mendocino, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Diego, Santa Clara, Shasta 
and Solano. 

E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko at sfchronicle.com. 
--------
The Press Enterprise
S.B. County must drop chads by 2004 
February 14, 2002
By Tim Grenda

The county's top election official expressed concern Wednesday about how 
she will comply with a federal judge's order to switch from older 
punch-card voting machines to a more high-tech method by 2004. 

"This is not a good thing for elections," said San Bernardino County 
Registrar of Voters Ingrid Gonzales. "This forces us to move before 
we're really ready. It seems like that clock is ticking a lot faster 
now." 

The American Civil Liberties Union, which sued the state seeking to 
force counties to replace punch-card voting systems, praised the judge's 
order to have the new methods in place in time for the November 2004 
elections, a year earlier than a previous deadline. 

"This landmark ruling means that by 2004, 'hanging chad' machines will 
go the way of black-and-white TVs, eight-track tapes and the Edsel," 
said ACLU staff attorney Dan Tokaji. 

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson was the first of its 
kind since the 2000 presidential election when a recount in Florida drew 
national attention to thousands of unreadable "hanging chads" on 
ballots. Riverside County had gonehigh-tech for the 2000 elections after 
the county spent $14 million to buy 4,200 electronic voting machines. 
The county's touch-screen voting became a nationwide model for others 
seeking to avoid voting problems like those in Florida. 

Earlier deadline 

California Secretary of State Bill Jones last year issued a July 2005 
deadline for San Bernardino and eight other counties that used the 
punch-card voting systems to update to newer voting technology. 

State election officials, who had asked for a 2006 deadline, vowed to 
meet the nearer deadline. Gonzales at the time called the 2005 deadline 
"feasible." 

But on Wednesday, the judge granted an ACLU request to move the deadline 
to November 2004, the next presidential election. 

A trial to decide the matter had been scheduled for Feb. 19 in a Los 
Angeles federal courtroom. That trial has now been canceled, court 
officials said. 

The judge's order requires the counties, including San Bernardino, only 
to discontinue use of the punch-card voting systems by 2004. It does not 
require counties to replace them with touch-screen electronic machines 
such as those used in Riverside County. 

Gonzales said that's a good thing. 

San Bernardino County would have to spend more than $18 million to buy 
enough electronic voting machines to serve the county's roughly 620,000 
registered voters and train officials to use them, Gonzales said. 

"Counties that might have wanted to move toward electronic voting may 
not be able to, because of the deadline," she said. 

Other ballot technology 

While no decision on how to proceed has been made, the county could 
implement an improved paper voting system by 2004 and possibly move 
toward electronic voting after that, Gonzales said. 

In one paper-ballot system, voters use a pencil to fill in a bubble next 
to their candidate. The ballots are then counted by a machine, she said. 
The process is similar to test forms used for most high school and 
college exams. 

There also are other voting systems where a machine, rather than a pin 
held by the voter, punches out the holes on the paper ballot, she said. 

"That's a much less expensive and fairly easy transition for us to 
make," Gonzales said of the improved forms of paper voting. "I think 
we're talking less than $50,000 to do that." 

Reach Tim Grenda at (909) 890-4460 or tgrenda at pe.com