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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- About 40 electronic voting machines in Emery County will have to be recertified because the county clerk allowed purported security experts to test them, state election officials decreed.
The cost to the county could be upward of $40,000, said Joe Demma, chief of staff for Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert.
Technicians will have to reinstall the software on the voting machines because the clerk allowed them to be tested by people from Black Box Voting, a nonprofit group that has been critical of electronic voting systems.
State officials said the Black Box people reportedly were not directly supervised the entire time and the tests by people unaffiliated with the state elections office or Diebold Elections Systems, which built the machines, voided the warranty on the machines.
"We don't know what they did to the machines," Demma said. "For all we know, they could have these set up so that they fail on Election Day, so he could then point the finger at us for the problems."
Emery County Clerk-Auditor Bruce Funk said he discovered discrepancies in available memory and called in Black Box Voting.
Diebold said the memory differences were due to varying sizes of font files in the computers.
County commissioners never agreed to the independent testing, and they have since changed the locks on the storage areas holding the machines and have not given Funk a key.
Last week, he voluntarily handed over his keys to the previous locks and told commissioners he did not want responsibility for them because he felt they were unsafe.
Funk said Monday that he did not regret his actions.
"I think I have a duty and responsibility to the public to make sure these machines will work," said Funk, who is not running for re-election. "I have deep concerns, and I didn't want the stewardship of these machines. They (the commission members) need to have that control."
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
