PA: Suit seeks to decertify paperless touchscreen voting machines

http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/15291457.htm

By Anne Danahy
adanahy@centredaily.com

A Centre County poll worker is one of 25 plaintiffs in a lawsuit aimed at getting the state to decertify touch-screen voting machines.

The suit, filed Tuesday in Commonwealth Court, is part of a national effort by some voters to get rid of paperless voting systems. The suit says the electronic machines being used in 57 counties do not comply with Pennsylvania code because they do not produce a "permanent physical record of each vote cast," as the code requires, and they have not been shown to be reliable, accurate and secure.

Mary Vollero, a Bellefonte poll worker and plaintiff in the case, said in her precinct the iVotronic touch-screen machine wouldn't produce a zero tape -- indicating no votes were stored on the machine -- before polls opened.

Another issue in the lawsuit, Vollero said, is the ability of voters to verify their ballots.

"The touch-screens don't allow the voter to see how the vote is recorded," Vollero said.

Centre County used both paperless touch-screen and optical-scan systems for the May primaries. With optical scans, voters use pens to fill in ovals on paper ballots, then feed the ballots into a machine that tells them if they have voted for too many candidates.

County commissioners voted 2 to 1 on Aug. 1 to buy touch-screens from Election Systems & Software.

The new system replaces the county's old punch card ballots, as was required by the federal Help America Vote Act.

Contrary to a report by the Associated Press that appeared in Wednesday's Centre Daily Times, the lawsuit does not allege that any miscounts occurred in Centre County during the May primary election.

Board of Commissioners Chairman Chris Exarchos said Tuesday he is confident the touch-screen machines are secure and the court will uphold their approval by the state.

Gov. Ed Rendell said the state does not allow a voter-verified paper trail because there is no system that can now produce one while maintaining voter privacy.

"If someone can find a way to do it and preserve the right to privacy, we'll do it," Rendell said.

Marian Schneider, a Berwyn lawyer who is co-counsel in the case, said paperless machines such as iVotronics do not comply with Pennsylvania law because they do not create a permanent physical record and are prone to security breaches.

"If there were discrepancies," Schneider said, "because you don't have a voter-verified paper ballot, there would be no way to resolve the problem."

She said there are three basic parts to voting: marking the ballot, casting the vote and tabulating results. But with electronic machines, she said, there is only a record of the end result, not of where voters marked the ballots.

The group Voter Action is supporting the case in Pennsylvania and similar lawsuits in New York, Colorado, Arizona and California.

Anne Danahy can be reached at 231-4648.