Pueblo among other Southern Colorado counties to have machines decertified.
By CHARLES ASHBY
CHIEFTAIN DENVER BUREAU
DENVER – All but one Southern Colorado county may be forced into buying
expensive new voting machines and ballot scanners before next year’s elections.
Following testing by the state, Secretary of State Mike Coffman decertified nearly all
voting machines used in 49 Colorado counties, including Pueblo.
Those counties use machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems, Hart InterCivic and
Election Systems & Software.
Saguache County was the only county in the region that uses voting machines built by
the only company that passed all tests: Premier, formerly known as Diebold. (Alamosa
County also uses some Premier machines, but saw its Hart machines fail Coffman’s
tests.)
“We’re in big trouble,” said Pueblo County Clerk Gilbert Ortiz, who said the county
spent $450,000 on new Sequoia machines just last year. “We don’t have a lot of time to
come up with a solution here. It’s going to cost us a lot of money any way you look at
it. We’re going to be talking about close to $1 million.”
Coffman said he followed state law in testing the voting machines, which were called
for in a court order from a lawsuit filed last year by a citizens group that claimed all
electronic voting machines were unreliable and insecure.
The judge in the case ordered a recertification of all voting machines in the state,
saying the method used by then-Secretary of State Gigi Dennis, formerly a Pueblo West
state senator, was inadequate.
“I had to strictly follow the law along with this court order,” Coffman said. “If I
were too lenient in determining what passes, then I risk having the state taken to court
by activist groups who will ask for an injunction on the use of electronic voting for the
2008 election.
“If I exceed the requirements of state law and the court order, then I will be sued by
the vendors who manufacture and sell this equipment.”
Coffman’s tests showed:
All Premier machines and ballot scanners passed.
Sequoia’s optical scanners that count ballots were acceptable, but their voting
machines weren’t because of security reasons, such not being password protected, exposed
controls and lack of a paper audit.
Hart’s electronic voting machines passed, but their scanning devices could not
accurately count ballots.
ES&S scanners failed because they couldn’t complete the threshold test of 10,000
ballots, their voting machines could easily be disabled and they lacked an audit
trail.
Coffman said state laws gives vendors and county clerks 30 days to appeal his
findings, which include methods to mitigate problems with their systems if they can prove
they would pass certification tests.
He plans to meet with many of them today in a special task force formed by Senate
Majority Leader Ken Gordon, D-Denver. Several county clerks from around the state,
including Ortiz, will be at that meeting.
“I really carefully reviewed this whole process,” Coffman said. “From what occurred in
2006 along the recertification . . . I really sought to strengthen this process. I
created several new layers, including a testing board of four technical experts . . . as
well as an audit team.”
Coffman said more than 3,000 tests were performed on all four vendors, with more than
40,000 pages of documents that were reviewed.
Some of those clerks have also indicated they plan to ask the Legislature when it
convenes next month to consider changes to the voting machine certification laws, or
merely allow them the ability to use all mail ballots for a general election, which
currently is not allowed.
Ortiz said that even though the county’s ballot scanners passed Coffman’s tests, they
are tied into the voting machines. And since they failed the tests, the county would need
to replace them, too.
The Pueblo clerk said he fears he might have to go to the Pueblo County commissioners
to ask for money to buy new equipment, money he knows the county doesn’t have.
Still, he was confident that something will be done to address the issue, but couldn’t
say what.
“It just adds more challenge to what I was expecting to be the most challenging
election year of all time,” Ortiz said. “But I know we’re going to find a way. It’s not
in anybody’s interest to not have elections running smoothly in this state. I have a
great deal of confidence that the elected officials of this state are going to find a
way, but if we don’t make those decisions by February, we could have a catastrophe.”
Only three brands of electronic voting machines tested by the secretary of state are
used in Southern Colorado. In addition to Pueblo County using Sequoia, the remaining
counties in the region use Hart: Alamosa, Baca, Bent, Chaffee, Conejos, Costilla,
Crowley, Custer, Fremont, Huerfano, Kiowa, Las Animas, Otero, Prowers and Rio Grande
counties.
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