Crescent-News.com - Testing of voting machines a never-ending pursuit

COLUMBUS (AP) -- If you heaved a sigh of relief last week when Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner announced plans to have Ohio's voting machines tested for security, you've forgotten recent history.

Brunner, a Democrat elected last fall, will not be the first elections chief to have voting machines screened for potential security and operational lapses. The machines of all three firms operating in Ohio -- Election Systems & Software, Hart Intercivic and Diebold Election Systems -- already have been tested. And retested.

But you may have missed the news about Brunner's predecessor, Republican Ken Blackwell, paying experienced firms InfoSentry and Compuware to conduct reviews similar to the one Brunner announced she will lead.

It was 2003 and tensions were high leading into the 2004 presidential election, the first since the historically tight toss-up between Al Gore and then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush had sharply divided America's electorate.

Though most voters probably weren't paying attention to the 2004 election yet, a contingent of others was hysterical -- leading voting machine protests around the country, including in Ohio, armed with billboards depicting the electronic devices as giant monsters poised to eat your vote.

But the tests did occur.

After certifying the potential vendors from which county elections boards would be able to buy machines, Blackwell launched $175,000 worth of security reviews that he hoped would ease concerns about the newly introduced technology.

Blackwell ran into some stumbling blocks along the way. One testing firm turned up with a financial interest in Hart and was fired. And a first round of testing revealed 57 potential security flaws in the machines, prompting Blackwell to call off his plan for deployment in the 2004 primary.

But documents still available on the secretary of state's website confirm all three firms eventually passed muster, addressing nearly every one of the problems. Security examiners said issues not resolved could be handled effectively through proper policies and local oversight.

"By and large, all reasonable technical precautions have now been taken to ensure that the integrity of the (electronic machines) and their data are maintained under normal operating conditions during an election process," examiners wrote in their final reassessment of ES&S machines.

After addressing a potential breach that occurred during testing, examiners wrote of Diebold's machines: "We were not even able to conduct the majority of our attacks, much less make them successful."

Of Hart, examiners wrote after follow-up testing: "There are no apparent security risks related to the equipment tested using the test scenarios executed during this assessment that would prevent its use in an election."

The problem that Blackwell's testing regimen encountered soon afterward was not technical but political: Bush won the 2004 election. Democrats still upset that their candidate had not prevailed in 2000 turned to theories of election manipulation -- dominated by the notion of machine error -- as a possible explanation.

That's where Brunner's security review comes in.

A seasoned election lawyer, Brunner campaigned on the promise that she would do something to reassure voters their votes will count in 2008. It was a message spoken to all voters, but one not-so-subtly intended for Democrats disenfranchised in 2000 and 2004.

She referenced the review's relevance to 2008 in her statement: "With Ohio's pivotal role in the last presidential election and the likely emphasis that will be placed on our vote in the next, we owe it to our state and the nation to bring in the best experts available to examine these systems."

Spokesman Jeff Ortega said Brunner is not repeating tests Blackwell already conducted. He said developments have occurred since then, including the statewide deployment of voter paper trail technology and the conviction of two Cuyahoga County elections workers for rigging the 2004 presidential election recount to avoid a more through review.

And he said Brunner's review of paper printers will be more comprehensive than the recount verification that took place this year in Franklin County, at the hands of Republican elections director Matthew Damschroder. That recount showed 100 percent of electronic votes matched paper tapes.

"In general, it builds upon what Secretary Blackwell did," he said.

Catherine Turcer, who follows voting issues for Ohio Citizen Action, said even if the state duplicates some of the Blackwell testing, it isn't wasted money.

"What scientifically makes good sense may differ very much with what actually reassures people that their vote counts," she said. "And sometimes it's worth going above and beyond what is necessary to do what will make people absolutely believe, 'My vote will count.' "