CHEYENNE -- Secretary of State Joe Meyer played host last week to the state’s county clerks, introducing them to both the Senate and the House as the people who’ll conduct the 2006 elections in the fall.

Linda Barnhart, Johnson County clerk and president of the group, said the clerks gather every year to exchange ideas and try to reach consensus on how they can operate their offices across the state in a consistent manner.

“We’ve all gone to optical scan systems that are ADA compliant,” said Fremont County Clerk Julie Freese. ADA refers to the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires voting systems that can be managed by voters with a range of disabilities.

In 2002, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act in response to the Florida voting debacle during the 2000 elections. Under HAVA, Meyer and all county clerks are obliged to have new election systems.

Twenty counties have gone with ES&S’s AutoMark system, while Carbon, Laramie and Goshen counties have gone with Diebold’s optical scan.

“We’ve had 10 years of experience with Diebold,” Laramie County Clerk Debbie Lathrop said. She said the most significant problem with Diebold, in past disputed elections, is when the voting machines have been connected to the Internet n making them vulnerable to computer “hack” attacks that change votes.

“Early versions were vulnerable, but we’ve addressed that in these models,” Lathrop said. She and her election workers make sure that no election machines are ever connected to the Internet.

In addition, her Diebold machines are protected with higher-security software and physical security measures. She said Diebold has been responsive to security concerns, even converting an infrared port to a visible light port, to thwart hacking attempts.

Teton County Clerk Shery Daigle said she has upgraded to the latest ES&S machines, which have a tab system and verify ADA ballots before being entered into the tabulation system.

Caution urged

The Election Science Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group, is urging state secretaries and county clerks across the country to do a rigorous, “white box” security analysis of their electronic voting machines, regardless of manufacturer.

Steve Hertzberg, project director for the institute, said there are two ways to determine how robust a security system is built into a voting machine.

The first is “black box,” a method favored by computer hackers, where someone tests a voting machine from the outside in, without any knowledge about the software or internal hardware of the machine.

The second is a more transparent, collaborative approach, called the “white box” method, said Hertzberg. In this method, independent computer experts get access to the software and hardware, to determine from the inside out, the strengths and vulnerabilities of a voting machine.

Hertzberg compared this method to independent auto engineers collaborating with a manufacturer to study a car from the inside out and make safety recommendations.

To date, only one county in the country (Franklin County, Ohio) and one manufacturer (ES&S) have agreed to work with the institute on a “white box” security assessment.

Hertzberg emphasized that he and the institute were not pointing fingers or assigning blame. Instead, he said that all county clerks and secretaries of state are facing a huge learning curve.

“This isn’t their area of expertise,” he said.

Hertzberg noted that Diebold has switched from infrared to visible light ports in its machines in Wyoming.

“How will that machine be transported?” he asked. If it is transported in a clear bag, rather than an opaque bag, there could still be an opportunity for someone to illegally change the votes in that machine.