By Linda Taaffe

Los Altos residents this November will be among the first voters in Santa Clara County to use the new electronic voting machines, the key roadblocks in last week’s controversial court decision to delay California’s gubernatorial recall election.

The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors said it plans to replace the county’s punch-card voting system with touch-screen voting at the polls in Los Altos, Cupertino, Gilroy, Palo Alto and Sunnyvale during the November consolidated election. It will give voters an opportunity to test the new system before putting the devices in place at all county polls by the March 2004 presidential primary election. Federal law required all California counties to replace their systems by 2004 following the debacle of Florida’s punch-card count during the 2000 presidential election. A three-member panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco last week ruled against the use of punch cards, postponing the Oct. 7 statewide recall election until next March, when the punch-card system will be eradicated from all California counties. The final decision is pending judgement by an 11-member panel and possible further appeals.

The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors last April awarded the county’s Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) Voting Contract to Sequoia Voting Systems Inc. following a series of pilot demonstrations at 30 county locations, including two in Mountain View, during last year’s general election.

The Sequoia system works much like an ATM machine. Each voter inserts a plastic card, which the poll worker activates. This starts the voting process. Voters touch the area over the initiative or candidate they wish to vote for, and the machine records the vote. When the plastic card is removed, the vote is sealed. The results are recorded on a paper scroll and in a memory chip that won’t lose information if there’s an electrical glitch.

Despite the push to install more reliable voting devices, some critics say the current touch screens aren’t necessarily the answer.

Officials said the county had few problems with the punch-card system and probably wouldn’t have changed its system in upcoming elections if not for the federal ruling.

A review of the registrar’s office conducted by the civil grand jury last year concluded that the county’s punch-card polling system was fair and impartial.

“Given the grand jury’s experience during this review, it has determined that it is unlikely that the nationally reported problems will occur here,” according to the review.

David L. Dill, a professor of computer science at Stanford University and founder of the watchdog site VerifiedVoting.org, said he isn’t convinced that the Sequoia system is a change for the better.

There are problems with relying on electronic voting machines to record and count votes without the backup of a voter-verifiable audit trail, Dill concluded on his research site. The Sequoia contract does not include a paper printout available to voters to verify their votes, making the system potentially risky. A paper printout would enable voters to view a printout of their ballot while it is displayed under glass before actually casting their ballot.

Bugs in the software or codes embedded into software could go undetected and impact outcomes, he said.

“Unfortunately, election technology has not advanced to the point where it can provide us with electronic systems that are reliable enough to trust with our democracy. In other words, we just aren’t there yet,” he said.

County supervisors say they are confident that the machines are secure, but intend to add a paper backup system as soon as the secretary of state certifies the equipment. The practice is currently being reviewed.