With less than a year to go before the 2008 presidential election, Colorado finds itself in a difficult position.
Secretary of State Mike Coffman on Monday decertified many of the electronic voting machines and scanners used in the state, finding fault with their accuracy and security.
The question, at this point, is how in the world can Colorado be ready for what will be a high-interest, big-turnout election in November?
Coffman says he has the answer. He wants to get the state legislature to loosen up the bureaucratic process by which the systems are evaluated, and then fix the voting machines so they meet standards.
It seems to be the best of some not very attractive alternatives.
Monday’s announcement, though a shocker, was months in the making. The certification process was a tortured one, according to Coffman.
He said he had to strong-arm some of the companies to get them to respond to his office’s requests for information. Some of them stalled. One company ignored him.
In the end, many of the machines had unacceptably high error rates and security systems that were easily corruptible. For instance, one machine was completely disabled when an ordinary magnet was put up to the screen.
Coffman’s headline-grabbing announcement certainly will get the attention of voting-machine vendors. And it will draw the interest of the legislature, which convenes in a matter of weeks.
But will it work? Not even Coffman is sure. He is proposing not a change in the accuracy standards, but a change in the certification process.
He wants to continue the certification process, enlisting the expertise of county elections specialists along with voting-machine company representatives. The end goal is to devise fixes for the systems.
Coffman is talking about things like software patches and updates that could bring the machines into compliance.
Particularly important is to have certified optical scanners. Without them, the counties cannot even do an all-mail ballot since scanners are needed to count the ballots. Hand counting ballots is an unworkable alternative that would take weeks to complete and is prone to error.
The fallback position is to buy new scanners for the affected counties, a big expense that likely would involve getting the state legislature to cough up money it doesn’t have.
Coloradans find themselves in this position after a 2006 lawsuit in which a judge found the voting machine certification process, shepherded by then-Secretary of State Gigi Dennis, was “abysmal.” Coffman inherited a certification process designed to correct those problems.
The fixes pitched by Coffman seem like a pragmatic way to get through the 2008 elections, but there surely ought to be further reforms. Those might include choosing one voting machine manufacturer for the entire state so the certification process is less complicated.
But for the time being, we’re looking forward to seeing Coffman collaborate with the legislature to craft smart changes in the law.
Then, the ball is in his court to use his customized process to get voting machines up to state standards. Coloradans deserve fair elections with results that inspire confidence. It’s clear that, at this point, there’s much work to be done to get us there.
