County election officials prefer Diebold

Diebold's new high-speed vote-counting machines aren't yet certified for use in the United States, but King County election officials want to buy them to support next year's planned move to all-mail voting.

Sherril Huff, nominated by County Executive Ron Sims to become elections director, on Monday told the Metropolitan King County Council that Diebold's tabulators are the lowest-cost option, are compatible with King County's existing Diebold products and represent "the solution with the least amount of risk."

King County needs tabulators that will count votes more quickly, officials say, when it becomes the largest jurisdiction in the country to conduct elections almost entirely by mail. Once all poll voters convert to mail voting, the county's ballot volume could increase by one-third to one-half. Election officials plan to test a new system next spring, months in advance of the November presidential election.

But several Democrats on the council said they were concerned by the not-yet-completed federal certification process and by controversy resulting from some computer experts' claims that Diebold voting machines and computers could be hacked to fraudulently alter election results. Diebold says its equipment is secure.

Councilmember Larry Phillips said election officials seemed not to have considered "the risk associated with making the purchase of software that hasn't been used elsewhere."

Bill Huennekens, who is managing the transition to mail voting, said he expects the federal Election Assistance Commission to certify the Diebold tabulators before delivery of the machines in November.

Councilmember Bob Ferguson also expressed reservations about Diebold, saying the company "simply has a higher bar, in my mind. ... I pick up the paper and read those articles [about potential hacking] just like everybody else does."

Councilmember Dow Constantine said after the meeting he wants to make sure digital images made by the Diebold tabulators can't be used to determine how an individual voted.

Ohio-based Diebold and Hart InterCivic are the only vendors whose equipment meets the county's requirements, election officials said. Diebold's equipment would cost $1.7 million; Hart's would cost $3.8 million including staff training. A federal grant would pay $1.5 million of the cost.

Hart's offer was more expensive, in large part, because it would replace much of the equipment, including hundreds of touch-screen machines the county already has bought from Diebold for visually impaired voters.

Huennekens said King County would be able to prepare ballots much faster using Diebold, rather than Hart, equipment. King County's ballots are complex because the county has an unusually large number of precincts.

Seattle resident Richard Borkowski, who opposes all-mail voting, said it doesn't much matter which vendor is chosen, because neither has opened its computer source code to inspection by computer professionals outside the certification laboratory.

"As long as you have secret software," he said, "it's irrelevant who sells the secret software. Our vote count is supposed to be transparent and public."

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com