Panel Recommends Scrapping Video Screen Voting

Panel member Marc Carrel, an assistant secretary of state, said he was "disgusted" by Diebold, which has "been jerking us around." The company, he said, has disenfranchised voters in California and undermined confidence in the new and developing technology of touch-screen voting.

California should ban the use of 15,000 touch-screen voting machines made by Diebold Election Systems from the Nov. 2 general election, an advisory panel to Secretary of State Kevin Shelley recommended Thursday.

By an 8-0 vote, the state's Voting Systems and Procedures Panel recommended that Shelley cease the use of the machines, saying that Texas-based Diebold has performed poorly in California and its machines malfunctioned in the state's March 2 primary election, turning away many voters in San Diego County.

The recommendation affects 15,000 Diebold touch-screen machines in San Diego, Solano, Kern and San Joaquin counties.

California panel members, however, disagreed. They cited a litany of alleged problems with Diebold in recent months, including its sale of machines to the four counties without federal and state certification, last-minute software fixes before the March election, installing uncertified software in voting machines in 17 counties and still lacking federal approval for its newest voting machines for the November election. They also expressed fears the systems are vulnerable to security breaches.

"In my view we need a clean slate with this vendor," said panel member John Mott-Smith, chief of the state's elections division. "Most of the big problems in the March election came with Diebold equipment. People did not get to vote because these things did not function and that's not acceptable."

The secretary of state's investigative report of the March 2 elections found that 573 of 1,038 polling places in San Diego County failed to open on time because Diebold voting machines malfunctioned. Voters were told to come back later or try voting at the county's elections headquarters.