Recount procedures questioned in California election

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http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2003/10/03/state0351EDT0011.DTL&type=printablePolitical activists are planning to scrutinize punch-card ballot results in California's historic recall election, raising the likelihood of a recount if the outcome is close.

But some computer scientists fear more trouble with electronic ballots. With almost one in 10 registered voters using touch-screen machines that don't automatically produce paper printouts, they say a legitimate recount would prove impossible.

County registrars and executives at the companies that sell and update the electronic voting machines say scientists' concerns are overblown and irresponsible.

None of the elections officials who supervise the 50,000 touch-screen machines serviced nationwide by Diebold Election Systems have reported glitches or hacks that have resulted in known miscounts or fraud, said Mark Radke, director of the voting industry division of North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold.

But David Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford University and a leading skeptic of touch-screen voting, is urging voters in the four counties using touch-screen terminals -- Alameda, Riverside, Shasta and Plumas -- to vote with absentee ballots, which use optical scan systems and provide paper ballots. He fears falsification or deletion of votes on touch-screen systems.

"You can't do a meaningful recount if the question is about the integrity of the voting machines themselves," Dill said.

According to a July study by Johns Hopkins and Rice universities, which analyzed Diebold source code that had been posted anonymously on the Internet, any clever hacker could break into Diebold's system, which is based on Microsoft Windows, and vote multiple times.