[Voterescue] West Lake Hills mayor blames electronic voting

[Jenny Clark]

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/11/02/1102westlake.html

Judge: West Lake Hills election stands
Robin Vaughan had sued to overturn City Council vote results; mayor 
blames electronic voting.

By Marty Toohey
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Friday, November 02, 2007

A Travis County judge ruled Thursday that West Lake Hills' last City 
Council election will not be overturned, prompting the city's mayor 
to blast the electronic voting machines used in the election and call 
for a return to paper ballots.

The judge ruled on a lawsuit filed by Robin Vaughan, who lost by two 
votes in the city's May 2006 council election. Vaughan contended that 
she lost because of mistakes by poll workers and asked the judge to 
either declare her the winner or order a new election.

Two voters testified that poll workers confused them with people who 
have similar names and gave them incorrect electronic ballots that 
did not include the West Lake Hills races. The voters said they were 
unable to realize the mistake until they had cast their ballots. 
Vaughan's lawyer, Ace Pickens, argued that they were denied the 
opportunity to vote for Vaughan, who lost 680 to 678.
But visiting District Judge James Clawson Jr. ruled in favor of 
Councilwoman Jane Noble, who defeated Vaughan. Noble's lawyer, Doug 
Becker, argued that the machines gave voters the opportunity to 
recognize that they were filling out the wrong ballot and that they 
should have known to ask for help.

The judge, addressing Pickens after a day of testimony, said 
responsibility for casting the correct ballot is shared by the voter 
and government.

"The voters, we've seen they all knew they had the wrong ballot," Clawson said.

Minutes later, West Lake Hills Mayor Mark Urdahl, who had supported 
Vaughan's unsuccessful campaign, said electronic voting machines were 
responsible for the dispute and should no longer be used. He said a 
major flaw with electronic voting is that, instead of poll workers 
handing out a ballot with personal information a voter can confirm, 
the workers hand out a ticket with a string of seemingly meaningless 
numbers that is inserted into a machine.

"If we had a paper ballot," Urdahl said after the trial, "we wouldn't 
be here." He said the city should consider conducting its own 
elections instead of hiring the Travis County clerk's office, which 
conducts elections for many governments in Travis County.

County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir, who was at the trial, said the problems 
that led to the trial were caused by human error and are not inherent 
in voting machines. She told Urdahl that the county could not switch 
to paper ballots because doing so would violate federal and state 
laws intended to protect voters with disabilities.

Noble said the talk about scrapping electronic balloting "is a 
diversionary tactic because the mayor doesn't like that I won. ... I 
think it's a great day for the city, because the burden of this 
election contest is over."

mtoohey at statesman.com; 445-3673
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://voterescue.org/pipermail/voterescue_voterescue.org/attachments/20071102/f0857e48/attachment.html