Calif. E-Voting Ban Challenged.

CALIFORNIA; UNITED States

Election officials in San Bernardino County, Calif., announced plans to defy a state-imposed ban on the electronic systems in the upcoming November 2004 presidential election. In a statement on May 11, 2004, county officials said they plan to use touch-screen voting systems developed by Sequoia Voting Systems Inc. The decision is in direct defiance of an April 30, 2004 directive by the California secretary of state that stripped the systems of their certification in 10 counties, pending security improvements. The directive also banned the use of touch-screen systems from McKinney, Diebold Election Systems in four other counties. The controversy over the use of the systems stems from research and public statements by independent IT security experts who uncovered glaring security vulnerabilities in the hardware and software used in many of the e-voting systems on the market. Jeremy Epstein, senior director for product security at WebMethods Inc. is one of thousands of private-sector executives who have signed an online petition that calls for vendors to provide voter-verified paper audit trails for their systems.