The watchdog group Voter Action Wisconsin requested the State Elections Board decertify four types of touch screen voting machines Wednesday, calling them "inherently unreliable." The board has yet to act.
"The petition is asking [the SEB] to decertify the direct record electronic, or DRE, voting systems," Mike Wittenwyler, attorney for Voter Action Wisconsin, said. "It's asking for the board to not use those in Wisconsin during the Nov. 7 election as a response to inherent technological problems."
Wittenwyler added the complaint arose from studies showing the machines are open to fraudulent tampering and susceptible to human error.
The complaint references four different models of machines recently implemented at about 1,300 polling places in 55 counties across the state.
According to Kyle Richmond, public information officer for the SEB, the board did not act on the complaint at Wednesday's meeting because it was not presented early enough to be on the agenda.
"One day before the meeting, members got a big package of what we consider a last-minute request," Richmond said. "It was especially difficult to act on, considering they were asking the Elections Board to reverse actions it made months ago and decertify equipment already used in the September primary."
The complaint said the DRE machines, first used in the Sept. 12 primary election, violate the Wisconsin Constitution and a number of state statutes including "invad[ing] voter privacy because the [paper] printout preserves the exact order in which voters have voted."
Maribeth Witzel-Behl, interim city clerk for the City of Madison, said the SEB approved certain types of voting equipment and that each county decides which to use.
"At the polls in Dane County, we use the AutoMark machine, where it marks a paper ballot based on the voter's selection and feeds it directly to the ballot tabulator," she said. "Nobody can find out from the AutoMark how many votes were cast for a certain individual because it does not retain that information."
The AutoMark and DRE machines were implemented following the 2002 Help America Vote Act, which requires all polling places provide voting machines for disabled voters.
The SEB itself has made a recent request, calling for funding for two full-time staffers and nearly $1 million extra in annual funding to maintain voter lists in the upcoming state budget.
Richmond said the $931,548 would be used to house and maintain hardware for the newly implemented Statewide Voter Registration System, as current funds are used only for the SVRS software.
According to Richmond, the board also hopes to hire two auditors in addition to the three already on staff to monitor campaign financing in the state.
"[From 1991-2004], campaign activity increased from $20 million to $45 million," Richmond said. "We have not had an increase in staff … but are receiving over 2,800 registrants — either candidates, political parties or political action committees — and their campaign finance reports are supposed to be audited to see where money is coming from, where it's going and how much they have."
Richmond added the board is currently about 1,200 audits behind.
