- WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP)
-- A computer crash that forced a pre-election test of electronic voting
machines to be postponed was trumpeted by critics as proof of the balloting
technology's unreliability.
-
- The incident in Palm Beach County ó which is
infamous
for its hanging and pregnant chads during the 2000 presidential election
- did not directly involve the touch-screen terminals on which nearly one
in three U.S. voters will cast ballots on Election Day.
-
- But critics of the ATM-like machines said it proved how
fickle any computer-based voting system can be and highlighted the need
for touch-screens to produce paper records.
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- Tuesday's public dry run had to be postponed until Friday
because a computer server that tabulates data from the touch-screen
machines
crashed, said county elections supervisor Theresa LePore. Such "logic
and accuracy" tests are required by law.
-
- She said she suspected Hurricane Jeanne, which struck
in September, may have zapped electricity and air conditioning to the room
where the server was stored, causing temperatures to soar to 90 degrees
or more and possibly causing the crash. The storm wiped out power to nearly
1.3 million homes and businesses throughout Florida.
-
- The incident raised questions in the minds of computer
hardware and software engineers about the reliability of other computers
on which Floridians will depend for an accurate vote count on Nov. 2 -
especially touch-screen machines.
-
- An Achilles' heel of electronic voting equipment, just
like any machines whose circuits get hot with colliding electrons, is its
inability to tolerate extreme conditions, many experts say.
-
- "Heat is a very serious problem for these machines,
especially in Louisiana and Florida," said Dan Spillane, former senior
testing engineer of touch-screens for a small equipment manufacturer in
Seattle. "Basically, these things work in the secretary of state's
office. Outside of that, no one knows."
-
- LePore, who lost a re-election bid and will be replaced
as supervisor in January, said the incident did not result in deleted or
altered data and she predicted a smooth election on Nov. 2.
-
- "We can always go back if everything totally crashes
and burns," she said. "We still have the info on the cartridges
and the voting machines."
-
- LePore was referring to the memory cartridges in the
touch-screen machines that record the votes.
-
- Critics of paperless voting systems used in 15 Florida
counties said the incident demonstrates their pleas for a system that
includes
printers on every touch-screen and produces paper records of every ballot
cast.
-
- "I don't have any confidence at all in these
machines,"
said Susan VanHouten, a poll worker in Lake Worth, Florida, who has helped
mobilize 900 monitors at polls in Palm Beach County on Nov. 2. "At
this point, the only thing we can focus on is getting as many people as
possible in the polls to watch for electrical problems and hardware and
software problems."
-
- According to technical standards for electronic voting
systems, updated in 2002, voting machines must be able to tolerate storage
temperatures ranging from minus 4 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. They must
be able to operate in "natural" conditions and temperatures
ranging
from 50 to 95 degrees.
-
- Those standards aren't satisfactory to Vincent Lipsio,
a firmware design engineer in Gainesville, Florida.
-
- Lipsio, who is helping draft e-voting equipment standards
for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, said most
hardware
that's considered "mission critical" - including medical devices,
military equipment and aviation hardware - should tolerate 180 degrees
or more. He worries that the machines could fail under a variety of
extremes,
from heat waves to lightning storms and severe low-pressure systems.
-
- "Conceptually, the whole electronic voting thing
is now so far from what I think is acceptable that I would never vote for
it, if I had the choice," Lipsio said. "These standards aren't
any more mission critical than your average video game."
-
- Lipsio said he took little comfort in knowing that the
meltdown at the Palm Beach elections office happened during a trial to
help spot such problems.
-
- "What happens if there's a hurricane on election
day, or terrorists knock the power out?" Lipsio said. "The
reality
is these machines are dependent on electricity, and unless you're going
to have generators at polling places, you need a paper backup
system."
-
- Mechanical problems during California's March primary
caused nearly half of all touch-screens in San Diego County to malfunction,
causing hundreds of precincts to open late. Heat-related troubles have
flared up in other counties.
-
- In the July primary, numerous machines in one elementary
school in Decatur, Ga., failed throughout the day, when temperatures
exceeded
90 degrees, according to a report by poll monitors.
-
- An executive at Sequoia Voting Systems, which provides
Palm Beach County's touch-screens (but not the county office server that
crashed), called critics' fears overblown.
-
- "These machines have been tested to severe
conditions,
and we haven't seen any weather-related problems - from dry Nevada to humid
Florida," spokesman Alfie Charles said.
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