A nonprofit group filed a lawsuit Thursday to block the use of electronic voting machines in Colorado, saying they are unreliable, vulnerable to fraud and inaccessible to the disabled.
The lawsuit makes Colorado the latest battlefront in a growing controversy over the use of the machines. The litigation has the potential to disrupt Colorado’s August primary.
“There is a tsunami sweeping the United States right now of voter concern about the insecurity and unreliability of electronic voting systems,” said Lowell Finley, co-director of Voter Action, which filed the Denver suit with the Wheeler Trigg Kennedy LLP law firm.
The lawsuit, filed in Denver District Court, names Colorado Secretary of State Gigi Dennis and officials in Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Douglas, Jefferson, La Plata, Larimer and Weld counties. If successful, it would bar the use of all electronic machines in the state.
Elections officials throughout Colorado have been scrambling to install the voting machines to comply with a federal law that requires that at least one be installed at each polling place.
The state has parceled out about $15 million in federal grants to help counties buy the machines.
The federal law was a response to concerns raised by the 2000 presidential election and to make it easier for the disabled to vote. But critics contend the electronic machines will make disputed elections more likely.
Lawyers who filed Thursday’s lawsuit said they had been trying for more than a month to get the secretary of state’s office to produce certification documents for machines manufactured by Diebold Elections Systems, Sequoia Voting Systems, ES&S and Hart Inter Civic.
“The documents that were produced were produced in such a chaotic, incomprehensible manner that it was impossible to tell what testing had been done to these machines at all,” said Andrew Efaw, one of the lawyers who filed the lawsuit.
Dana Williams, spokeswoman for the secretary of state, said the machines had been rigorously tested by state employees.
“The secretary of state is very confident in the certification process used in the state of Colorado,” Williams said.
Electronic voting machines have sparked controversy elsewhere. Pennsylvania and California recently warned counties that use Diebold’s touch- screen voting systems to take additional steps to secure them.
Voter groups have filed similar suits in New Mexico, Arizona and California.
Activists are planning additional litigation in Pennsylvania and Florida and are fighting a lawsuit from the U.S. Justice Department that contends New York is in violation of the federal law.
The New Mexico case resulted in state legislation that required elections officials to use paper ballots that are optically scanned.
Staff writer Christopher N. Osher can be reached at 303-820-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com.
