BBV: E-vote directive has counties upset, concerned about costs

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Posted on Mon, Jun. 28, 2004

E-vote directive has counties upset, concerned about costs

By Andrew LaMar

Mercury News Sacramento Bureau


SACRAMENTO - Election officials in 14 California counties are busily piecing together plans to bring paper ballots back to polling booths for the November presidential election.

Under orders from Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, counties that had leaped to electronic voting must backtrack. Some must abandon their touch-screen systems for now; others can keep them if they supplement the electronic balloting with paper versions.

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While county registrars criticize Shelley, others cheer and defend him. ``This is not a student government election,'' said Kim Alexander, president and founder of the California Voter Foundation, a non-profit group that advocates using technological advances to benefit democracy. ``We need to have rigorous oversight, testing and management of these voting systems.''

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``Courts have suggested it is indeed the discretion of the secretary of state to certify and decertify machines,'' said Mary Beth Moylan, a professor who specializes in election law at the McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento. ``The bottom line is courts are reluctant to say one machine over another. The courts don't want to be in the business of choosing what types of machines have to be used.''

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http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/9030018.htm

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