Voting Machines Had Defective Part
Key Component Was Replaced in Touch-Screen Units After Repeated 'Freezes'

By Cameron W. Barr
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 26, 2006; B05

The maker of Maryland's electronic voting system replaced a flawed electronic component in several thousand touch-screen voting machines in 2005, state election officials acknowledged this week.

To eliminate unpredictable "screen freezes" that have occurred since the machines were first used in Maryland in 2002, Diebold Election Systems installed new system boards in about 4,700 voting machines from four Maryland counties: Allegany, Dorchester, Montgomery and Prince George's.

The screen freezes do not cause votes to be lost, officials said, but they confuse voters and election judges who sometimes wonder whether votes cast on a frozen machine will be counted.

The acknowledgment of the repairs came in response to queries from The Washington Post and sheds further light on Maryland's troubled transition to electronic voting. Critics said it raises concerns about whether the state and company officials have kept the public adequately informed about problems with a system that cost taxpayers $106 million.

State officials said this week that they learned after the November 2004 election that a flawed system board was the source of the screen-freeze problem. But documents show that Diebold had diagnosed the problem early that year.

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State and Diebold officials have been discreet in discussing the replacement of the system boards -- the core electronic component of the voting machines -- to address the screen freezes.

Morrill, the Diebold spokesman, said the company had "publicly disclosed" information about the problem and its solution in communications with the State Board of Elections staff, including a six-page letter from an executive to state Administrator of Elections Linda H. Lamone written in reply to her questions about the system boards.

But the minutes of the July 12, 2005, meeting of the election board said only that a "technology refresh" would be conducted to bring voting units from the four counties "up to the same specifications as the equipment in the later phases of the implementation." The minutes did not mention the replacement of thousands of system boards.

Board Chairman Gilles W. Burger and members Joan Beck and A. Susan Widerman said they do not recall being told that system boards would be replaced as part of the technology refresh.

Burger said Lamone should have brought the replacement of the system boards to the board's attention. "If she withheld this information from the body she reports to, I think she is not carrying out her duties as a public official," said Burger, who in 2004 sought with other Ehrlich appointees to oust Lamone, a move that was blocked in court.

Goldstein said board members could have learned the details of the technology refresh. "If they had asked, we would have told them," he said.

Within the company's Maryland offices, executives tried to keep confidential any discussion of the need to replace system boards, according to four former Diebold contractors interviewed in recent weeks.