When you go to the polls for the May 18 primary, can you be sure your vote will count?

Team 4 has been reporting on potential security flaws in Allegheny County for years, and it turns out that the same questionable machines and security procedures are being used today.

Team 4 investigator Jim Parsons reported that critics of the iVotronic voting machine say that, like any computer, the software can be changed to make it do something it wasn't designed to do -- such as count your vote twice or not at all.

At some undisclosed time next week, county elections workers will make a final software check on electronic voting machines before shipping them out to thousands of polling places. That's what worries the watchdog group VoteAllegheny.

"Whenever you have a system where only two minutes of access can provide a switch in the voting software, it's a very tough problem," said VoteAllegheny's Richard King.
At the North Side warehouse where thousands of electronic voting machines are kept for Allegheny County, Team 4 saw a side door propped open. Anyone could wander in.
"Once the software is verified, we need a document showing the touchscreen voting machines have not been tampered with in the warehouse," King said.

VoteAllegheny is in discussion with county officials to have security cameras mounted above the machines in the warehouse. Currently, cameras are only watching some of the doors.

But critics of iVotronic machines say the real solution is to scrap them -- as Ohio and California have done -- in favor of a machine which provides paper proof that the computer has counted your vote.

"In the event of possible fraud or machine malfunction, you need a physical backup," said VoteAllegheny's David Brown.

County officials say that random testing of the voting machine software provides adequate security.

"We have all these tests in place. We test before and after, and we haven't seen anything that shows that anything has been tampered with," said Mark Wolosik, manager of the county's Elections Division.

At polling places, poll workers are required to post a "zero count" printout from each electronic voting machine that shows the vote count was zero at the start of the day. If you don't see that posted, you can ask why.

If a voting machine is malfunctioning when you try to vote, you can demand to cast a provisional paper ballot. That is your right as a voter.

Also, voters should make sure that the judge of elections marks their presence on the numbered list of voters when they sign in at their polling places.