San Diego Grand jury praises touch-screen voting, criticizes state ban

North County Times ^ | May 28, 2004

[John Jorsett]

SAN DIEGO ---- San Diego County's grand jury sharply criticized California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley this week, saying his decision to ban the county from using new "touch-screen" voting machines in November was unsound and undermined voter confidence in the system.

A grand jury report issued Thursday said the problems that marred San Diego County's first electronic election in March would not reoccur.

Electronic "glitches" caused 36 percent of the county's 1,611 polling places to open late at the March 2 primary elections, cheating an unknown number of people out of their right to vote.

Shelley banned San Diego and three other counties early this month from using their electronic machines built by Ohio-based Diebold Systems Inc. in the November presidential elections.

The grand jury said Shelley acted hastily, and that the electronic glitches affected other equipment and not the touch-screen machines. Future problems could be avoided through better training of polling workers, the grand jury said.

Shelley's order to have San Diego and other counties use paper ballots in November "could actually leave the voting process more open to irregularities than going forward with touch-screens," the report said.

[John Jorsett]

Let me just say: these people are idiots. The machines and procedures used in San Diego were fatally flawed and the ban is deserved until they're fixed.

[kellynla]

I just have two words for the Grand Jury...
"punch cards" :-]

[John Jorsett]

From the report (emphasis mine):

The Grand Jury believes that if the Registrar of Voters is able to implement our recommendations, the new voting technology will restore confidence in the security and integrity required to protect the voting process.

This is the registrar who, in the face of questions and doubts being raised about the security and reliability of the Diebold machines, gave us her personal assurances that they'd would be no problem, and was saying "all is well" even as the angry phone calls started pouring in from voters, and the poll workers were panicing because they couldn't get their machines to work. Excuse me if relying on the person who botched the job the first time to implement the solution doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

[upchuck]

Gee, I didn't know Teresa Lepore was working in San Diego also.