Election Integrity Activists Appalud Secretary of State's Decision To Go With Paper Ballot System - But She Still Won't Say Diebold

Several reports have been published in local Connecticut newspapers in the past few days concerning Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz' 180 degree turn away from Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting equipment to the more cost effective and reliable option of optical scan voting system. But as in her August 7 press conference announcing the decision, she is still refusing to admit publicly that the machines the state will be using are produced by Diebold Election Systems.

Typical is an article in the Citizen Register, which discusses the state's 20 year contract with LHS Associates, LLC, of Methuen, MA without mentioning Diebold. But LHS is merely a third party vendor that supplies Diebold equipment to several New England states. Bysiewicz seems to have less trouble with the state's choice for complying with HAVA accessibility requirements, Louisville-based IVS.

As Michael Fischer of TrueVoteCT explains in a letter posted at VerifiedVoting.org: For the lever machine replacement, the state will be buying Diebold AccuVote-OS optical scan machines from LHS Associates of Massachusetts. Towns may buy these machines for the November 2006 election and must have them in place by November 2007. Total cost for the state is $15.7 million. For the accessibility requirements, the state will buy the IVS "Inspire" vote-by-phone system, configured to print the ballot at the polling place via FAX, and have it in place in all polling places by November 2006. This is a centralized system which is accessed via public dial-up phone lines and actuated by the push buttons of an ordinary touch-tone telephone. This is a one-year contract with an initial cost of about $1 million."

The State has also entered into an agreement with the Computer Science and Engineering department of the University of Connecticut to "assist in certification and acceptance testing of the new voting technology". The evaluation team will be headed by Alex Shvartsman and includes several other faculty members and graduate students with expertise in cryptography, computer security, and software systems. They apparently already played a significant role in convincing Bysiewicz that, as she now says, "Touch-screen technology, in its current state of development, is simply not ready for 'prime time' here in Connecticut."

The only voting machines that LHS lists on its website are Diebold AccuVote optical scanners and Diebold TSx touchscreens. VoteTrustUSA joins concerned citizens in Connecicut and across the country in appalauding her decision to choose a paper based voting system for her state. But lets call it what it is - Diebold - and not hide behind a less familiar third party broker.