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Officials expect few problems with electronic voting in Feb. 5 primary Sunday, Jan 20, 2008 By John Lyon Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - Nearly two years after their disappointing debut in the May 2006 primary election, Arkansas' touch-screen voting machines are expected to perform much better in the state's Feb. 5 presidential primary, state and county election officials. Early voting for the primary begins Jan. 29. "We've had five statewide elections since the implementation of this new equipment, and every election is better and smoother than the one before," said Natasha Naragon, spokeswoman for Secretary of State Charlie Daniels. Forty-seven of Arkansas' 75 counties are expected to use touch-screen machines as their primary method of voting in next month's election. The remaining counties will have at least one touch-screen machine at each polling place but will give voters the option of using paper ballots which will be tabulated using optical scanning machines. The technology was implemented statewide to comply with the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which required states to revise their election systems to meet federal directives. The legislation was a response to election problems involving punch-card ballots that occurred in Florida during the 2000 presidential election. Technical snafus with Arkansas' voting machines, as well as delays in getting them installed and workers' inexperience in using them, were blamed for widespread problems in the state's May 2006 primary. After the election, Daniels said Election Systems and Software, the Omaha, Neb.-based company that received a $15 million contract to provide the state with election equipment, had "let Arkansas down." Jim Lagrone of Benton, Daniels' Republican opponent in last year's secretary of state race, argued the blame ultimately belonged with Daniels, who awarded ES&S the contract. Daniels later said he was pleased with steps ES&S took to correct the problems, including replacing its management team and project manager in the state and bringing in about 100 technicians to fix the numerous glitches that arose during the election. The company and the secretary of state's office also worked to improve training for poll workers. "We had some hiccups in the May primary" and the June 2006 runoff election, Naragon said, but she added that far fewer problems occurred in two school elections that were held in September of 2006 and 2007 and the November 2006 general election, in which 774,680 people voted. The most notable problems in the general election occurred in Benton County, where election officials released four different sets of what were supposed to be final results over a period of several days. One set of results, later corrected, showed voter turnout in some towns that exceeded the towns' total populations. "That was human error, and as people get more accustomed to using this new technology, those kinds of mistakes won't be repeated," Naragon said. Benton County offers voters a choice between touch-screen voting and paper ballots. Errors in tabulating the ballots were to blame for the county's problems in November 2006, according to county Election Coordinator Jim McCarthy. "When the people who were running the ballot counter were counting the ballots, instead of saving it to the file they were overriding it," McCarthy said. In attempting to correct that error, election officials accidentally caused some votes to be counted twice, resulting in the improbably high vote totals. After that problem was fixed and a third set of totals was released, election officials discovered that two electronic files containing ballots had been overlooked, so the results of two races had to be revised again. "It was basically just operator error that caused all this, but since then we've put safety features in to correct that," including ensuring that instructors are standing by while officials use the optical scanning machines to count votes, McCarthy said. In Crawford County, results of the 2006 general election were not announced until 4:30 p.m. on the day after the election. "We didn't have any software problems," Crawford County Election Commission Chairman Kenneth Chitwood said. "We had all our devices and we had tested everything. The problems were out in the polling sites when we had some paper jamming problems." In 2005, the Legislature passed a law requiring the touch-screen machines to create a paper printout of each vote, providing a backup so a hand recount is possible. Naragon said the downside of the paper printouts is that "just like with any printer, you have issues that can occur," such as paper jams. Crawford County election officials had to revise their election results two days after the general election, after discovering that votes cast on one touch-screen machine had not been tabulated. Since that election, the secretary of state's office has conducted on-site training for election workers in every county in the state, as well as a series of regional training sessions. Fifteen counties also sent election workers to Little Rock for training in 2007, and four more were scheduled to send workers this month. Daniels also included in his 2007 legislative package a proposal to place a state-funded election coordinator in every county, but the measure was pulled after supporters were unable to secure funding. Some have questioned whether electronic voting is susceptible to voter fraud. No actual cases of fraud involving touch-screen voting machines have been reported, but Ohio, Florida and California rejected the machines last year, in part because of concerns about security. Naragon said the computers used in Arkansas' elections are never connected to the Internet, so there is no possibility of people outside the election system hacking into them. Although no system is fraud-proof, the current system provides more safeguards than were in place previously because votes are recorded in multiple locations, she said. "We feel confident that the machines are secure. There are procedures in place, and if they're followed, there should be no risk of security breaches," Naragon said. Do voters share that confidence? In Sebastian County, where voters have a choice between touch-screen machines and paper ballots, a minority of voters chose touch-screen voting in the September 2007 school election - about 35 percent in Fort Smith and about 28 percent in southern Sebastian County, according to county Election Coordinator Jerry Huff. The percentage of people who choose touch-screen voting is growing with each election, however, Huff said. The public's comfort level with electronic devices in general is probably growing as the devices become an increasing part of daily life, he said. "You trust your money to an ATM machine. I think that's a pretty good analogy," Huff said. |
