Court Upholds Calif. E-voting Ban.

CALIFORNIA; UNITED States

COOPER, Florence-Marie; SHELLEY, Kevin

This article reports on the decision of a federal judge in a California directive that decertified touch-screen voting machines and withheld future certification until vendors of those systems can meet specific security requirements as of July 2004. The decision arose from a lawsuit, Benavidez v. Shelley, brought by disability rights advocates and four California counties that oppose California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley's requirement for voter-verifiable paper audit trails. The counties also oppose Shelley's order to decertify direct-recording equipment (DRE) voting systems. The plaintiffs argued that banning the systems would disenfranchise visually or physically impaired voters. The opinion written by Judge Florence-Marie Cooper was given. Cooper noted that Shelley is responsible for ensuring that votes are counted accurately, and requiring a paper audit trail is one way of fulfilling that obligation. State and local elections officials around the country are scrambling to ensure that e-voting systems in different jurisdictions are reliable and can be secured from tampering in time for the November election. The decision follows the release of a report two weeks ago by an IT security panel that outlined a strategy for certifying the security and reliability of touch-screen DRE voting systems QuickLink 47931.