Critics heated over clerk's new voting machines.
On a recent, frigid December afternoon, 15 concerned New Mexico voters huddled together in the narrow vestibule of the Santa Fe County building and waited.
***image1***A typical Santa Fe assortment of aging activists, bearded thirtysomethings and long-haired young women with babies in tow, the group expected to meet with County Clerk Valerie Espinoza. They hoped a few minutes in her office would be enough to dissuade Espinoza from purchasing 57 new Sequoia "Edge" touch screen voting machines for disabled Santa Feans. The group asserts the Sequoias are not disabled-friendly and, more importantly, have a rather unsettling habit of discounting votes.
Much to the chagrin of everyone in attendance, though, Espinoza never showed. A clerk in her office, Patrick Archuleta, told the befuddled activists who'd pressed up around him that Espinoza "was out," and they were welcome to leave a message. Robert Stearns, of the organization Verified Voting New Mexico and ostensibly in charge of the day's failed activity, announced that Espinoza had originally agreed to a meeting but backed out that morning. Stearns decided to gather his troops nonetheless because he thought there was still a chance she'd reconsider.
"I was getting calls and faxes and I realized I was being set up for a public crucifixion," Espinoza tells SFR. "I was not going to subject myself or this office to that. I had no idea what they were going to do."
The frustrated crowd at Espinoza's office and her last-minute cancellation reflects a larger conflict which pits state voting rights groups against local election officials. The debate is heating up now because 2002's federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) requires county clerks across New Mexico to purchase new machines which are accessible to disabled voters. Espinoza will buy the Sequoia machines-at $4,500 a pop in federal dollars-despite assertions the machines are not to be trusted.
Indeed, for the last week Espinoza has been under increasingly intense pressure from an assortment of voting reform groups, not just the small group that showed up at her office on Dec. 5 to change her mind.
***image2***Some of that pressure comes from Voter Action, a group currently suing New Mexico Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron and a slew of local county clerks (including Espinoza) over the use of Sequoia machines in the 2004 presidential election. According to the lawsuit-filed last January in Second Judicial Court in Bernalillo County-some of the Sequoia machines botched people's votes either by switching them from one candidate to another or discounting them completely [Outtakes, Oct 12: "
"]. The situation was particularly messy in Bernalillo County; the suit alleges approximately 12,000 votes were lost by Sequoia touch screen machines.
"We're currently litigating the reliability of these machines," John Boyd, one of the attorneys working on the lawsuit, says. "And if the judge says they're unreliable, we're going to ask that their use for elections be enjoined."
In a Dec. 2 letter to attorneys for both Santa Fe County and Bernalillo County (which also is considering purchasing the machines) Boyd's office urged both counties to hold off until a decision on the lawsuit is reached.
Paul Stokes of United Voters of New Mexico is also among those leading the charge against Espinoza.
"These machines have a history of problems," Stokes, whose wife Laura is a plaintiff in the suit against Vigil-Giron and Espinoza, says. "We know we're fighting an uphill battle, but we sure hope we can change some minds."
Bev Harris, executive director of Black Box Voting, a national election watchdog group, agrees the Sequoia touch screen machines are big trouble. According to Harris, her group obtained Sequoia voting machine logs from two Florida counties and one Washington county after the 2004 presidential election. Harris says the logs revealed a disturbing error rate of between one in five and one in eight votes.
"This a fairly serious problem," Harris says. "The logs show how error-prone these machines are, and the Sequoia machines' central tabulator, the mechanism which pulls in the votes, is profoundly insecure."
Despite the barrage of letters and pointed concerns about the Sequoia machines, Espinoza remains unmoved.
The county clerk says she's run extensive tests on two different voting devices, the Sequoia and the AutoMARK machines, and decided the Sequoia's structure is better suited to the needs of handicapped voters and provides more privacy.
"These are perfectly secure machines," she says. "I tested them myself. I put myself in the shoes of the voter with special needs who has to use them, and I chose the Sequoia."
Espinoza also says she has no knowledge that the Sequoia machines have had problematic vote counting in the past.
She has a staunch ally in Chief Deputy County Clerk Denise Lamb who refutes all charges that the Sequoias are dangerously flawed.
"Bev Harris is not the end-all be-all of voting machine technology," Lamb says. "She has her theories. Quite often, they are quite flamboyant and tinged with paranoia."
According to Lamb, former director of the State Bureau of Elections, any suggestion that the Sequoias skewed votes on election day last year is categorically false. Lamb says not a single machine lost a single vote. The problem, she says, was that the memory on the software used by Bernalillo County ran out.
Lamb also points to an Oct. 1 letter from four government agencies representing disabled New Mexicans and addressed to Vigil-Giron. The letter notes that representatives from the agencies tested the Sequoia machines and are comfortable recommending its use.
Greg Trapp, executive director of New Mexico Commission for the Blind, says his agency tested three different devices on Nov. 2-the Sequoia and two machines made by ES&S-and liked all three.
"Any of the machines we looked at would meet the access requirements for voters with disabilities," Trapp says. "We think all of the machines offer great benefits to voters in New Mexico and are really a step forward for voters with disabilities."
Lamb, a current member of the state legislature's Election Reform Task Force and past president of the National Association of State Election Directors, questions what she characterizes as "hysteria" over the machines. "I don't like to hear people tell stories that aren't true for political agendas," she says. "That disturbs me. I'm a big believer in the truth."
For voting rights groups, the truth is still in the eye of the beholder or, in this case, the voter. Back at the county clerk's office, the group who'd wanted to meet with Espinoza chatted amongst themselves for a few minutes before wandering off into the wintery afternoon.
"I think it's disrespectful the county clerk isn't here," Linda Wiener, among those who'd showed up to voice her concerns, says. "So many of her constituents come to meet with her on what's clearly an important issue, and she doesn't even show up!"
When asked for his thoughts on the situation, Stearns, a small, gray-haired man packed tightly into a parka jacket and knit cap, hands this reporter a slip of paper containing a polite statement, which includes the following:
"We're sorry this happened. We're concerned citizens who simply wanted to meet with our county clerk and deliver a letter outlining our views on voting systems for the disabled."
