by Sonia Santana

March 7, 2006 Tarrant county primary election night: Hart Intercivic eSlate equipment recorded 100,000 over votes in the election totals. Election officials noticed the vote totals seemed much higher than the 2004 primary elections.  After investigation, the over vote was reported as an undetected computer programming glitch. Later that week Hart Intercivic admits the eSlate machines were programmed incorrectly.  
John Covell, a vice president with Hart, was quoted in a story in The Fort Worth Star-Telegram on 3/10/06, as saying "The system did what we told it to do, We told it incorrectly."

March 21, 2006: Tom Green County.  The Texas Secretary of State calls for a halt of a vote recount for a county court seat race.  County Republican Party Chairman Dennis McKerley, called Roger Williams (Texas Secretary of State), when vote tallies in County Court-at-Law No. 2 race recount, were not matching the totals reported on election night.  Hart Intercivic sent a company representative to fix the problems.

Secretary of State Roger Williams, spent about $3 million dollars of our taxpayer money on an advertising campaign touting electronic voting as "easier, faster and more reliable".  Yet the Tarrant county and Tom Green county primary election problems aren't isolated incidents. In Texas at least 12 different counties reported problems with e-voting systems during the March 2006 primary. The media stories continue popping up.  Things are moving so fast on this front, it’s hard to keep up.  The latest news today, will be old news when this newsletter goes to print.  

Jefferson County, which had massive problems on election night, is currently withholding payment to its vendor ES&S and may revert to using paper ballots for the April 11th runoff.  Texas Supreme Court Justice Candidate Steve Smith (Republican) filed a lawsuit in Travis County on  3/31/2006. He’s challenging the outcome of  his primary race and the use of electronic voting. Incumbent Webb County Judge, Louis Bruni, has filed a lawsuit to postpone the run-off in his race because of the problems with the electronic voting machines.  Several more lawsuits are in the works, including one by David Van Os, our candidate for Attorney General.  David is in the process of preparing a case to challenge the use of e-voting equipment as unconstitutional under the Texas Constitution.
On March 23rd the office of the Secretary of State held its first public meeting in Austin, to collect comments on Diebold’s Voting System GEMS 1-18-24, which is up for certification in April 2006. All of the citizens who attended asked the SOS not to certify the equipment for use in Texas.  A very informative study, done by Berkley University and commissioned by the California Secretary of State found serious programming vulnerabilities with Diebold software. This study was published after our examiners recommended the Diebold equipment be certified.

This issue has certainly proven to be as serious as we predicted – pretty close to chaos. I don’t see the SOS, the Attorney General or the Governor’s office doing what needs to be done to assure the voters in Texas, that our votes are being counted accurately.  In fact the AG and Governor have been pretty silent on this issue entirely.  We need new leadership that understands the importance of an accurate and transparent voting system for Texas.  I would encourage all PPC members to become more educated on this issue and get more involved at your local county level. We need to demand that we have verified voter paper ballots now.  Start lobbying your county officials and take it on up to the state level.  We have a great opportunity with an election to make sure our candidates in our statewide races including the candidates for State Party Chair support VVPAT.

For an extensive list of problems all over the country, I suggest that voters do their own research. An excellent way to start this research is to visit www.votersunite.org. 

The technological problem with computerized voting is simple. You don’t need a Ph.D. in computer science to understand it. We can have a trustworthy voting system if, instead of a futile effort to ensure that voting equipment is error free by design, we empower each voter to verify that his vote has been accurately recorded. In other words, we need voter-verified paper ballots.

Dr. David Dill, Professor, Stanford University
Testifying before the James Baker, Jimmy Carter Commission On Federal Election Reform, April 18, 2005