By David Taber

Errors made by the city’s voting machine supplier have been cited as the cause of miscounts throughout the country, and in one instance last June, almost altered the outcomes of a number of Iowa races.

Despite this, experts say, the machines the city uses, the Optech Eagle and the newer, handicapped accessible, Automark, developed by Election Systems and Software (ES&S), are preferable to other options, because they leave a clear paper trail.

“The most recent case was in Pottawatamie, Iowa, Election Systems and Software programmed their elections. An election official noticed that some kid who didn’t even campaign was in the lead,” said Beverly Harris director of the election reform group Black Box Voting.

Errors made by the city’s voting machine supplier have been cited as the cause of miscounts throughout the country, and in one instance last June, almost altered the outcomes of a number of Iowa races. But for the official’s vigilance, nine candidates would have been awarded false wins in the county’s June 6 primary elections, thanks to a programming error in the memory packets of the Eagle machines.

“The problem is that election officials send the program directory to Omaha to have their guys write in the election specific information,” she said. Election officials do not have direct access to the information on the card and, if they are improperly formatted, cannot fix it themselves, she said.

But Douglas Jones, an associate professor in computer science at the University Of Iowa who has spent most of the last decade focusing on electronic voting, said this makes the Eagles one of the best options out there right now.

“Their security is not tremendous, so integrity depends on an audit by election officials,” he said. “I have gotten more records requests with newer machines in terms of them not working properly,” said Harris, who regularly investigates technology related election irregularities.

The decision to recount saved the day in Pottawatamie last June, where the County Auditor noticed absentee ballots in the Republican race for County Recorder had Oscar Duran, a newcomer who had hardly campaigned, beating John Sciortino, who has held the post since 1983, reports said.

A manual recount of the absentee ballots showed that what the Eagles had recorded as 99 votes for Duran and 79 votes for Sciortino was actually 25 for Duran and 153 for Sciortino. The discovery of the malfunctions led to a recount of all the votes cast in the county, changing the outcome of nine elections, and officials later admitted they had failed to properly test their equipment.

Somerville’s election commissioner, Nicholas Salerno said his department is vigilante about testing voting equipment, and it is unlikely that anything similar will happen here. “We test every memory pack and every machine,” he said.

They also test a sample ballot from each box, and code the different boxes so they know where to begin their search if something goes wrong, he said. And they send a copy of the tape certifying that each machine has been zeroed-out to the secretary of state prior to the election, he said.

Jones said another potential problem with the Eagle machines is, since they are no longer manufactured, it is hard to get replacement parts. But, he said, his home county has, as recently as last year, employed an even older version of the Optech Eagle machines, with few problems.

“They were purchased in the early 80’s, and they keep on ticking,” he said.

He also gave high marks to ES&S’s handicapped accessible Automark System, which Somerville will be using for the first time in the upcoming special election for alderman-at-large. The system utilizes voice and touch screen technology and allowing disabled voters to produce printed ballots in private.

‚ÄúIt‚Äôs a really ingenious solution to how you make an election transparent and handicapped accessible,‚Äù he said.  In general, he said, the most of the problems with elections today stem from reliance on proprietary software.

“We, the people are ultimately the ones responsible for insuring that our elections are properly run. You can’t rely on salesmen to tell you it was done right,” he said.