Slashdot Mirror
San Diego Diebold Poll Worker's Report Posted
James Renken writes "I was a poll worker in San Diego for this year's primary election. It was the county's first using Diebold voting machines, and as you may have heard, we ran into some problems! My full report of the goings-on can be found at Live from the Nuke Free Zone. Enjoy!"
Uncle Diebold's Clubhouse
On March 2nd, I was a poll worker for this year's California primary election. More specifically, I was a Systems Inspector in San Diego county, whose problems with voting machines and procedures received some coverage in the national media.
First, a summary of my personal opinion: I think that current electronic voting systems are better than the traditional systems in terms of security, and also in terms of usability for most people. However, I share the opinion of many bloggers that major security issues remain in the new machines and implementations, and that these issues should already have been fixed.
More details below...
This was San Diego's first election using electronic voting machines - specifically, Diebold AccuVote-TSx stations. Previous elections in the county used punch cards. The county failed to make the mandated upgrade prior to the last election, and a federal court ordered that it be done for this primary.
Previously, precinct boards in the county were made up of an Inspector, an Assistant Inspector, and clerks. As of this election, a Systems Inspector and an Assistant Systems Inspector have been added at each precinct. According to the Registrar of Voters, this is because a four-hour training session would have been required in order for Inspectors to learn both the general procedures and how to operate the machines. Instead, most of the technical details are left to the Systems Inspectors.
I was contacted and assigned as a Standby Systems Inspector, meaning that if necessary, I would stand in for a missing Systems Inspector or Assistant Systems Inspector in my part of the county. The standby system is apparently not used very much; they forgot to handle some details, like sending me a copy of the poll worker's manual, or notifying me that the location for the mandatory training had changed. Fortunately, I'm fairly resourceful, and the classes were running late anyway.
In the class, we were introduced to how the system works. Along with the usual paperwork and supplies, each precinct has:
* A Precinct Control Model (PCM).
* A number of voting stations (either four, six, or eight).
* Two Voter Access Cards (VACs) per station, plus one or two extras.
* Two Supervisor Cards.
A poll worker (usually the Systems Inspector) sits in front of the PCM. One poll worker has each voter sign the roster, while another checks the voter's address on another list. That second worker points to the appropriate line on the address list, and the PCM operator sees which party to program a ballot for - with the party name never said aloud.
The PCM operator then selects the party on the PCM's touchscreen, and inserts any one of the Voter Access Cards (VACs) for programming. The VAC is then given to the voter, who inserts the VAC into any one of the stations, and is then presented with the ballot for their party. After casting their ballot, the voter's VAC is ejected, and the voter is instructed to give it back to the poll staff. The VAC itself is not a ballot at all - it just authorizes a voting station to bring one up, and tells it which party's ballot to display. After a ballot has been cast using a VAC, it must be reprogrammed on the PCM prior to being used again.
We were warned that some voters might try to cheat by claiming that they received the wrong party's ballot. We were advised that, should this happen, we should insert the card in a station to make sure that it had not been used to cast a ballot already; then, add one to the tally sheet of programmed but uncast ballots, and reprogram the VAC after checking the voter's registered party on the street address list.
That was about it. We were shown the startup and shutdown procedures for the machines, and cast a few sample ballots with them. The regular poll workers were noted on a list, and some paperwork or other was handled. I asked about getting ahold of a poll worker's manual, and was promptly given one from a large box that was sit
As other people have posted here are pictures of a Diebold ATM crashed here on campus that dropped to the Windows XP display. We poked around at it for a while because the monitor was a touch screen (and a very, very crappy one that that). Interesting things:
- Windows media player was installed (as seen in the pictures)
- It's a P4 2GHz with 512mb of ram (wtf?! why on earth does it need that)
- There's a CD-RW installed
- There are two partitions and C: can't be accessed
- There's the standard crap that comes in My Documents (like the Beethoven playing)
- The printer is an Epson USB printer
- There was a device listed for ATM Driver or something, I presume what actually feeds cash.
- We never were able to get the network up, but there's an Intel network card in there.
- For some reason there are speakers so we could hear the Beethoven.
- It's running XP Embedded, didn't catch what version or what patches it had.
- There was some sort of Text-to-Speech (or maybe S-to-T) program
- As you can see Acrobat is installed
- Remote Desktop was enabled! (might have been turned on by one of us though)
That's what I remember from the 5 minutes before running to class.