Errors in Primary Reflect Challenges of Technology
By Eric Rich and Rosalind S. Helderman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 24, 2006
The widely publicized failure in Prince George's County to electronically transmit results from many polls after the Sept. 12 primary was compounded by a host of other errors, including failure to swiftly collect the data cards on which some votes are recorded and to properly secure voting machines.
The last of the cards were not retrieved and counted until nine days after the balloting -- several from inside electronic voting machines from a Landover precinct where Robert J. McGinley, the county elections board's attorney, said security procedures were "just blatantly not followed."
In some instances, machines containing cards were found in storage cases that lacked a required security seal. In others, tamper tape was missing from a locked door on the machine. In still others, data cards were found in machines on which doors were not locked.
Despite the roiling debate over whether electronic voting machines might be hacked into and an election stolen, the experience of Prince George's suggests a more mundane and probably widespread challenge in voting's digital age: Armies of minimally trained, modestly paid election workers are increasingly confronted with an unfamiliar, complex business.
Although the voting process was less dramatically flawed in Prince George's than in neighboring Montgomery County, the nearly two weeks since have seethed with suspicion and recrimination.
The elections board disqualified none of the cards, but the lapses undercut assurances that officials offered after the primary. Robert J. Antonetti Sr., interim Prince George's election administrator, had said 47 uncounted cards would remain safe because of the multiple security measures.
Antonetti's predecessor, Robin Downs Colbert, who resigned in June because of frustration over the rapid changes in technology, said she and her colleagues in several other counties "knew this was where it was headed."
"We warned everyone," she said Friday. "We warned the county we didn't have enough resources. We warned the legislature that it was too much too fast. . . . People have to be trained to use technology, and we need enough time to do that."
Antonetti said that working the polls was once "a second job for tobacco farmers" but that today "we need more skilled people."
But skilled people can be hard to find when the pay for the day for even chief election judges is $200.
Other counties also tallied provisional and absentee ballots in the past week, but Prince George's was alone in having to find and upload so many data cards. Montgomery, for example, had collected the last of its data cards less than six hours after the polls closed, said Marjorie Roher, spokeswoman for that county's elections board.
"If we don't have a memory card from a precinct, then we utilize the Montgomery County police, and we go out and find that card," she said. "We don't close shop for the night until every memory card is in hand."
In Prince George's, questions swirled about the security of the missing cards. Hundreds of ballots -- perhaps more -- were not immediately counted because nearly two of every three precincts failed to transmit their results electronically the night of the primary.
Antonetti said the transmission problems may have stemmed from dialing errors or from using digital phone lines instead of the compatible analog lines -- mistakes he intends to address in training sessions before November.
Gertrude Neff, 72, the chief judge at the C. Elizabeth Rieg Special Center in Bowie, said workers realized soon after the polls closed that their transmission cable was too short to reach a phone jack that she said was at least eight feet up a gymnasium wall. Oliver Smith, a chief election judge in a Cheverly precinct, said that after a frustrating day with the electronic equipment, he ordered the cards delivered to the office without trying to transmit data electronically.
If two attempts to transmit were unsuccessful, election workers were under orders to carry the data cards to Upper Marlboro, where they could be uploaded directly.
Yet some memory cards were not delivered until the next day; others were left in voting machines, where they remained until the machines were returned days later.
Donna Edwards, who trailed Rep. Albert R. Wynn in the 4th District Democratic primary, highlighted the data cards as a problem when she announced that she was contemplating legal action. Defeated county executive challenger Rushern L. Baker III (D) has requested an investigation.
The slow count magnified other problems -- some shared by other counties -- that hampered voting Sept. 12 and have fueled suspicion since.
At the troubled Landover precinct, in Matthew Henson Elementary School, voting machines that had been improperly connected to power sources went dark for nearly an hour once their batteries were drained. There and elsewhere, newly acquired electronic poll books, which were used to check in voters, crashed repeatedly. At least 15 precincts opened late because technicians failed to show up.
Some of those technicians had been assigned to ferry the electronic registries to voting locations, but judges at those precincts arrived on election morning to find them missing. That is what happened at Buck Lodge Middle School in Adelphi, where chief judge Bashir Khan said the electronic registries had not arrived when voting was to begin at 7 a.m.
"Obviously, we were panicked," said Khan, 67. "People were lining up."
The equipment was not delivered until nearly 11 a.m., he said.
To plug the gaps in the technical staff, several workers on a county government technology help desk were dispatched to polling locations, said Dale Young, 44, one such worker. They had received no training on the voting machines and had not been instructed in the elaborate security procedures, he said.
Between 2 and 3 a.m. after the vote, with data cards from one-third of the precincts uploaded, election officials stopped compiling results, saying they were too tired to continue. Roher said Montgomery officials stayed until nearly 5 a.m., working until all were uploaded.
In the days that followed, a beleaguered Antonetti provided conflicting accounts on key points such as the location of the data cards and the number that had not been counted. Although Antonetti and board members said they were doing their best to inform the public, the varying accounts deepened concerns.
Still, elections board President S. John di Stefano defended Antonetti in an interview Thursday, saying that his long experience in the field -- including 30 years in Prince George's -- made him indispensable.
Antonetti, 70, retired from Prince George's in 2000 and took a similar job in Howard County. He retired from that position before the Prince George's board brought him back to replace Colbert when she left.
Di Stefano said the board was in a bind when Colbert quit but said he was pleased Antonetti returned. The board, he said, retains confidence in Antonetti. Di Stefano, 79, said he was not troubled by the fact that Antonetti was once fined $7,500 for giving his wife and four children, including two ages 9 and 11, temporary jobs, because it was not relevant to Antonetti's professional expertise.
"I would not, under any condition, want to go into an election without Mr. Antonetti," di Stefano said.
Di Stefano and Antonetti said their office has been chronically understaffed and underfunded even as the state has increased requirements and allowed less time to complete them.
Antonetti said three employees have quit in the past two months, leaving Prince George's eight full-time staffers to handle the crunch in the state's second-largest jurisdiction. Montgomery, by contrast, employs 25.
Both counties pledged to hire and retrain technicians and judges before the general election Nov. 7 -- and to fire those who performed poorly Sept. 12.
"Human error is going to be a factor in every election," said McGinley, the attorney for the Prince George's board. "Was this one we're proud of? No."
Staff writer Cheryl W. Thompson and staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.
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