Washoe County preps for election

RENO -- Washoe County will hire an independent facilitator to help an elections task force review the integrity of ballots, voting machines and tallying machines before the 2008 election.

"We would like to be able to demonstrate our systems are secure. This task force gives us an opportunity to do that," Voter Registrar Dan Burk said Tuesday after the county board of commissioners voted to revive the task force and spend $2,500 for the new hire.

The move comes after Sparks resident Jan Chastain complained about county use of electronic machines at numerous commission meetings and raised general questions about Nevada's election machinery after what has been happening in California.

Making good on a campaign promise, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen has moved to decertify Sequoia and Diebold electronic voting machines for general use in the elections next year. They can only be used for early voting and for voters with disabilities.

"In light of the recent decision by the California secretary of state to suspend use of all touch-screen technology for their 2008 elections, we felt it necessary to review the operating procedures for the reliability, security and accuracy of our own similar systems," Burk said.

In California, the machines were tested in a laboratory setting that has been described by Los Angeles election officials as similar to "giving someone the keys and the combination to a bank vault and two weeks to open it," said Matthew Griffin, Nevada deputy secretary of state for elections.

Burk said no one in the country has proven any voting machinery has been hacked into and changed the vote in an election.

Since the lab test in California, Griffin said Nevada has not received any directives from Sequoia to change anything about its equipment and emphasized the California company makes only election equipment. Nevada has 7,682 Sequoia voting machines, including 1,217 in Washoe County, all with a paper voter-verified audit trail.

Griffin said his office would monitor the task force work and review its recommendations. The secretary of state's office certifies election machinery in Nevada and has technical, legal and election-related committees to provide advice.

In the past four elections, including primaries, using Sequoia machines, Washoe County has found no discrepancies when it sampled 2 percent of the vote, comparing the computerized vote with the paper tape that can be scanned, Burk said. As a further check, the paper tape will be counted by hand in the coming election, he said.

The commission agreed Tuesday to revive a 17-member task force created in 1999 after Washoe last county in the nation to certify its results after its count was challenged by John Ensign in his unsuccessful race against Sen. Harry Reid in 1998.

"We'll see what they come up with. The devil is in the details," Chastain said.