State Approves New Voting Machine Software

The legislature has directed the Secretary of State to change the format of election ballots.

In the past, the state has used what is known as an 'office style' ballot- which in layman's terms means names were listed top to bottom- beginning with the Republican candidate.

The new 'column style' ballot will have the Republican candidate listed in the right column, and the Democrat in the left.

In order to scan the new ballots, the state needs new software for its voting machines.

That's where John Sylvester comes in.

Sylvester's company LHS Associates has been supplying New Hampshire with voting machines since the mid-80's.

He told the Commissioners the Diebold 194W program called firmware is proven.

4:17 194W has been used in MA. for about 5-6 years. It's used exclusively in the state of VT. It's used in Maine...so it has a track record of performance and accuracy and that's why it was chosen.

Sylvester also testified that no New England state has reported any problems.

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1:02 the firmware has been tested by top computer scientists in the country and been shown to be highly vulnerable to tampering. And those same reports have indicated it's nearly impossible to reduce the risks of tampering.

That's Nancy Tobi with the organization Democracy for New Hampshire.

Tobi points out that a new version of the program has been tested several times.

And in February she says, the California Secretary of State released a report saying the system shouldn't be widely used until the bugs are fixed.

Tobi and others urged the Ballot Law Commission to require Diebold to open its program to public scrutiny and install random hand counts to verify the machine tallies.

Short of that, Democracy for New Hampshire asked the Commissioners to simply require hand counts statewide.

When asked about the real world implications of that plan, Secretary of State Bill Gardner recounted one Manchester Ward in 1970.

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4:49 ... it was about 3 am in the morning and they were counting ballots. And the local official said we can't do this, we have been here for so many hours. We are tired....so they decided instead of counting certain constitutional amendment questions that they would stack ballots in 100 and estimate the count. And they went home.

Gardner said in light of those kinds of episodes, local election officials slowly adopted machines.

After more than three hours of testimony Commissioners voted 4-1 to accept the new Diebold program.

Commission Chair Gary Francouer said he's troubled by the reported flaws, but believes the state has the ultimate backup.

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:34 I believe the paper ballot is what protects you from it. are there flaws in hand counting? Yes. And if you read the statistics, the hand counting comes out worse than the machines...we hold the integrity as long as we have the paper ballots.

The voting machine vendor, John Sylvester says Diebold is trying to develop improved technology in response to the criticism.

He said he didn't know if it would be ready for the November elections.

For NHPR News, I'm DG.