ELECTION 2002
Some electronic machines suffer glitches, but win mostly rave reviews
By DUANE D. STANFORD and MIKE MORRIS
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer
Georgia's new touch screen voting system won rave reviews from voters in its first statewide test, but elections officials aren't ready to celebrate yet.
The next big test of the statewide system will come tonight, when poll managers across Georgia begin counting votes from the electronic terminals. And, reports of a glitch that changed dozens of Republican votes to Democratic votes threatened to overshadow an otherwise smooth transition to the new technology.
State GOP attorney Randy Evans said his election monitoring team has received reports from at least 100 voters in more than 20 counties around the state who said the machines highlighted the wrong candidate box after they made a selection.
State and national GOP leaders sent out advisories this afternoon warning voters to check their ballots carefully and report any problems to poll workers.
The problems appeared to be limited to the races for governor and U.S. Senate, Evans said. The voters reported that the review screen showed they had selected the Democrat when they had actually selected the Republican. Evans said at least 30 voters have agreed to sign sworn statements about the glitch.
"We want to get the information while its fresh in their minds," Evans said. "These reports are virtually identical."
Chris Riggall, spokesman for the secretary of state's office, said the errors are likely the result of calibration errors, which would cause the screen to react as if a voter's finger is pressing a different area of the screen. Riggall said the state's touch screen vendor, Diebold Election Systems, received reports of possible calibration errors from three different precincts in three counties. But he said the state's troubleshooters have not reported similar problems.
"It is certainly conceivable that there could be a unit here or there that could be out of calibration," Riggall said. The calibration errors happen when electronic coordinates on the touch screen are thrown out of whack. '
Evans said the complaints of mismarked ballots came from Gwinnett, DeKalb, Cobb, Fulton, Cherokee, Heard, Carroll, Muscogee, Coffee, Hall, Coweta, Troup, Baldwin, Clarke, Washington, Toombs, Haralson, Wayne, Columbia and Bibb.
Some of the complaining voters were able to correct their ballots before casting them, Evans said. Others inadvertently touched the green "cast ballot" button while trying to scroll through the review page to see if any other races were wrong.
About 10 a.m., a voter approached poll manager Elizabeth Perkins at Henderson Mill to complain that her vote was jumping on the screen, dancing from Republican to Democrat. "She had pushed Saxby, and it went up to Cleland," said Perkins, "I said 'try it for the governor,' and it did it again. We cleared it again, and started again, and it came out all right."
A neighboring voter overhead the discussion of the problem and said his machine was doing the same thing, Perkins said. Then a third reported the problem. The second and third voters stayed on their original machines and eventually were satisfied that their correct votes had been cast, Perkins said. The original complainant, however, switched machines. "She said 'I'm not happy with this machine. I want another machine,'" Perkins recalled.
Technicians arrived in about 15 minutes and rebooted three machines, the poll manager said. The technician gave the poll manager no reason for the problem and the problem did not happen again.
Milli Jordan, 49, said she encountered the problem when she tried to vote for the Republican candidates for lieutenant governor and for a local school board race. Jordan, who voted at Kilough Elementary School in Dawson County, said she touched the buttons for the Republican candidates but noticed her ballot showed she had voted for the Democratic candidates in those races. She was able to correct her ballot, so she didn't consider it a major issue.
Despite the day's glitches, the majority of voters praised the new machines.
"It's great," said Joe Penley of Barnesville. "My 4-year old granddaughter could do it. It's hard to make errors if you just follow instructions."
The glitches included terminals that wouldn't work and voter access cards that malfunctioned. The most significant problem was in Terrell County, near Albany, where ballots in at least three precincts listed the wrong county commission races. Elections director Ann Jennings said a poll manager caught the error after the new voting machines were unsealed. None of the statewide races were affected.
Local elections officials shut down the polls at one point as they worked to solve the problem. The county has asked a judge to hold the polls open for two extra hours and a ruling is expected this afternoon.
The error in Terrell could open up the county's election to a legal challenge, especially if any of the affected races are close. Two of the races were unopposed. An undetermined number of voters cast the wrong ballots and state officials said there was nothing they could do to correct those votes.
Reports came in from around the state this morning of machines that wouldn't turn on or that crashed during voting. Workers at two DeKalb precincts had trouble getting a response from technical consultants on call to help troubleshoot problems.
State elections officials said the system's manufacturer, Diebold Election Systems, is replacing units that go down. The company has extra terminals on hand that have been tested and accepted by the state. The computer terminals are dummy units that must have an active memory card loaded onto the machine for it to work.
Chris Riggall, spokesman for the Secretary of State's Office, said there wasn't a specific flaw that was causing the machines not to boot. "Other than the statistical reality that out of 22,000 units you're going to have a failure rate," Riggall said.
Late-opening polls were a major problem in failed touch-screen transitions in two Florida counties in September. There were no such reports today in Georgia.
At 7 a.m., a technical kink held up the line at Jean Young Middle School in the Cascade section of southwest Atlanta. Some voters felt frustrated waiting more than a half hour or longer to vote.
"This is not my day," said Cathy Lewis, 29, an elementary school teacher, as she fanned herself with a piece of election literature.
The problem, it turned out, occurred when some electronic voting cards refused to take the coding. After five unsuccessful cards, Lewis succeeded e-voting with help from a poll worker.
In southeast Georgia's Treutlen County, the 40-minute wait to vote was disheartening for Elections Superintendent Grace Proctor.
"It's backing up pretty good," Proctor said. "It's slower than normal, but at least the outside [non-courthouse] precincts seem to be doing pretty good because they are smaller."
Proctor cited two reasons for the delay -- the failure of one of the seven voting machines to work and the extra time voters needed to understand and operate the machine.
Other problems around the state included:
A DeKalb County voter reported that six machines at a precinct at Bethune School off Covington Highway were down as of 8 a.m. Nearly 100 people waited in line and voting was taking about an hour. The machines reportedly were set up this morning instead of last night and the batteries may not have been fully charged.
No voter access cards at a precinct in Union County. The cards allow voters to access the ballot. Cards were rushed to the precinct.
Voter access being forced into the wrong slot on the terminals. Voters tried to push cards into a gap below the card slot. Officials in Savannah were telling managers at all of the county's 109 precincts to cover the gaps with masking tape.
One of the glitches affected gubernatorial candidate Sonny Perdue's wife, Mary, when she voted in Houston County about 8 a.m.
In the middle of casting her vote, her machine locked up and crashed. It was the third time a machine had crashed at the Kathleen precinct.
After officials rebooted the computer, Mary Perdue continued on with ease.
"I think anytime you have that many new computers, you're going to have some problems, but the workers handled it well," she said. "They helped me put a new card in."
Republican nominee Sonny Perdue had no problems voting at the same precinct.
In the state's election command center in downtown Atlanta, officials wrote problems on a dry erase board in the office of Deputy State Elections Director Kathy Rogers. A map of the state on one wall was covered with tags representing more than 100 members of a state action team put together to respond to problems.
It was still unclear this morning whether the state was able to fix three data lines that counties will use after the polls close to transmit vote counts to the state's computer database. If they cannot be repaired, it could take longer to upload results.
For the most part, the scattered technical problems weren't enough to dampen voters' enthusiasm about the machines.
More than 2,000 voters are registered at Marietta precinct 2A at Al Burruss Elementary School, and by 7:30 a.m., well over 100 had already passed through.
Poll supervisor John Mohar said that voters were taking about 4 minutes to vote. He said that's pretty quick, considering that there's a lot of things to vote on.
Voters reported having no problem at all with the new machines. "You have to remember to touch the screen," said Judith Klein. "It's a lot better than with the poke-it, stick-it thing."
Getting to the polls may have proved to be the hardest part, as heavy rain was reported throughout the metro area this morning. More rain and thunderstorms through the day were expected to hinder turn out.
Voters in the south Georgia city of Dawson were surprised to see lever voting machines in use this morning. Dawson and several other cities across the state opted to use the old machines this year rather that change over to the new touch screen machines. State law doesn't require counties to vote by touch screen until 2004.
Early in the morning, most election chiefs said things were going smoothly. Cobb County elections supervisor Sharon Wingfield reported that all polling places opened on time, as did Cherokee County supervisor Al Stone.
The only problem in Cherokee, Stone said, was that the demonstration voting machines had been improperly coded and wouldn't work. That did not affect the machines used by the voters, he said.
Forsyth County elections supervisor Gary Smith also reported all polls open on time and said that his only problem is, "the lines are huge."
A large crowd also gathered early to vote at Precinct 732 in Douglasville.
By 7:10 a.m., the line already stretched outside Stewart Middle School, and at least 100 people were in line at 7:30.
Elsewhere across Georgia, Emmett Walker, 73, of Musella arrived at the Crawford County polling site in overalls and a state of skepticism.
"I heard in Florida they didn't even have the machines on when it came time to vote," he said.
"Well," said poll manager Claire Mattox and handed him an instruction card on the machines. She was nervous too.
When it was announced that the polls were open, Mattox said to no one in particular, "the moment of truth."
Five minutes later, the second in line to vote, Walker raved.
In more than five decades of punching, pulling and other methods of voting, Walker declared electronic voting tops.
"This is the best," he said. "And quicker too."
One concern with the electronic machines was that older citizens would have difficulty reading the screen.
"Bah," waved Walker.
"That's the thing that made it work so beautifully," said Elaine Harvey, of Musella, who voted before work. "Everything came up so nice and clear. It couldn't have been better."
Jeanne Pollard, poll manager for the largest precinct in Albany, strode confidently to the line of two dozen or so people who gathered at the door of the Beattie Road Church of Christ.
"The poll is officially open," she said.
"It's really exciting that we're part of history," said Pollard, who has been working at polls for 25 years -- through paper ballots, punch cards and, now, touch screens. Within a minute, the sound of voter cards clicking in could be heard.
Denver Hooten was the first person at the poll to cast a ballot.
"It's very simple," she said. "It walks you right through it. I don't know if my mom will agree with that."
But she assumes her 80-year-old mom will figure it out.
"She has a microwave."
In southwest Georgia's Webster County, elections officials were up before dawn today, readying new voting machines that didn't arrive until Monday.
The county's eight machines had to be charged overnight, and workers were setting them up at 6 a.m. at the county courthouse in Preston.
But despite the last-minute preparations, poll worker Kelli Holbrook said, "so far, everything is going very smoothly. We're just waiting for folks to start showing up."
Doris Eakes, a teacher in Webster County, said the new voting machines were simple.
"If we can do it in rural Georgia, they should work anywhere." -- Staff writers Mike Morris, Mia Taylor, Dan Chapman, Sonja Lewis, Ralph Ellis, Jingle Davis, Mary Lou Pickel, Yolanda Rodriguez, Norman Arey, Alma E. Hill, Andy Miller, Andrea Jones, Doug Payne, Stacy Shelton, Dana Tofig and Charles Yoo contributed to this article
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