Naked City

A scheduled Aug. 18 closed-door meeting of the state's voting examiners was postponed by Texas Secretary of State Geoffrey Connor after a lawsuit was filed by the ACLU of Texas and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. A press release by the plaintiffs credited the postponement to the suit, but a spokesman for Connor's office said the meeting was canceled outright at the request of two companies (Diebold and AccuPoll) seeking to have new voting machine technology certified by the examiners. An AccuPoll spokesman said that federal labs had not finished examining software that was supposed to be demonstrated at the meeting, and Diebold said it pulled out because the equipment in question won't be ready for use in November.

The lawsuit demands that the regular meetings – where, among other things, voting machines are inspected for approval – be opened to the public. Currently, the public may view videotapes of the meetings, but may not attend. The lawsuit alleges the meetings are in violation of the state Open Meetings Act.

The ACLU and EFF are both fighting to require that electronic voting machines provide a voter-verifiable paper ballot. "We are pleased that the voting examiners will not hold their August 18 closed meeting," said Adina Levin of ACLU-Texas. "However, we need to ensure that this will become a permanent solution instead of just a temporary one. We will proceed with this lawsuit until the public is guaranteed that the certification process of voting technology will be an open and transparent one."

Secretary of state spokesman Bill Kenyon said that although the meeting was postponed at the companies' request, Connor has requested a state attorney general's opinion (due by Nov. 21) on whether future meetings must be opened.