Elections chief defends county's voting machines

12/23/05

By BARNEY McMANIGAL

NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER

Despite concerns raised by state officials this week about potential irregularities with the county's voting machines, elections staffers on Thursday said the system will do fine in the June 2006 election.

"I'm not concerned," said Clerk-Recorder-Assessor Joe Holland. "The system we have is accurate."

On Wednesday, California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson announced that two types of machines have not met new criteria established for updating voting systems. He warned elections officials in Santa Barbara and 16 other counties that he may disqualify those machines from the next election until they pass.

Santa Barbara County has only one of the two machines in question, the Diebold Optical Scan, which reads ballots cast by voters at the polls. The other machine is the electronic Touch-Screen, which the county has no plans to purchase.

Mr. Holland said that the problem occurred because the state has never reviewed the computer codes used to operate the county's 200 machines.

"Best I can tell, it was just overlooked," said Mr. Holland, who said he expected the state to review the codes and approve the machines, which have been used in several elections since the county purchased the $1 million system in 2000.

According to reports, the coding performs two critical tasks -- it secures ballot entries and later provides instructions to election officials on how to access and tally the votes.

A spokeswoman for Mr. McPherson said the new criteria for voting systems require all machines to pass a review by the Independent Test Authority, a nationwide computer systems auditor.

"The source code was never reviewed by the ITA," said Mr. McPherson's spokeswoman, Jennifer Kerns. "During our review for Diebold's application, it was discovered that there may be a potential risk with that (code)."

Echoing Mr. Holland's sentiments, Ms. Kerns said she expected the systems to clear the review.

"We're hopeful that we'll be able to find a resolution," she said.