Certification delay could stall all-mail voting in King County
Time is running short for King County to obtain the vote-counting equipment that officials have said they need to conduct the first countywide vote-by-mail election next year.
Election managers now expect the federal government to certify the tabulators and computer database by late December or early January - four months later than they predicted.
Elections Director Sherril Huff said last week she hasn’t developed a backup plan for how to run the November presidential election if certification slips into February, when it would be too late to prepare for a test-drive of the new equipment in a small election in the spring.
That has raised questions about whether the county will be able to shift to all-mail voting next year as planned.
Huff said the equipment vendor, Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election Systems), slowed the certification process in order to address security vulnerabilities found in California and Florida government-sponsored reviews. The California study found that election equipment made by Diebold and several other manufacturers was vulnerable to hacking and tampering with election results.
County officials initially were alarmed over the delay but “felt much better” when they were told of security improvements made by Premier, Huff said. “We still accomplish what we were most concerned about accomplishing - the ability to have the equipment onboard, available to us to test in a spring election,” she said.
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) was given authority at the beginning of this year to certify that election equipment will work properly and is secure from tampering. The EAC hasn’t yet certified any new systems.
The county Citizens’ Elections Oversight Committee - which has opposed using new equipment in the 2008 presidential election - had some tough questions for Huff on Wednesday about the delay in certification. Above all, members wanted to know what her “plan B” is in case the Premier products don’t receive federal approval in time.
“We’re still looking at plan B,” Huff said. “We have concerns about doing a countywide election without new equipment, but we have to have a contingency plan about what we can do to make that work. We haven’t had a sit-down and worked specifically on that.”
Huff said parts are no longer sold for the county’s existing Diebold equipment, and higher-capacity equipment is needed whether or not the county shuts down its traditional polling places next year. She said she hasn’t decided whether the county should drop the plan to move to all-mail voting next year if the old equipment isn’t replaced.
Jim Rigby, a Republican Party representative on the oversight committee, asked if the county could conduct an “accurate and fair and honest” election at the polls next November without the new equipment. Huff replied yes. Asked if she could guarantee the same accuracy in a vote-by-mail election, she said that would require further study.
A.J. Culver, a nonpartisan committee member, said he was concerned that election officials haven’t yet drafted a contingency plan. “Boy, I think that’s pretty high risk,” he said.
Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com