VotersUnite!

New device, old method
Scanners to count ballots in Feb. 3 election
By Sharon Dunham

At the same time Mohave County moves forward with new machines to count ballots next month, voters will return to one of the the oldest forms of voting — blackening the ovals next to their choices on paper ballots.
In the presidential preference election on Feb. 3, Democrats will be the first county voters to trade punch-card ballots for the paper ballots that will be read by an optical scanner at each precinct.
With a scanner on site, Mohave County Director of Elections Allen Tempert demonstrated the system to District III Democratic precinct committee people on Saturday morning, telling them that voters will see little difference in voting procedures. The major change will be administrative as poll workers and other election officials learn to operate the machines.
With the new system, Mohave County is complying with the federally mandated Help America Vote Act of 2002. As the most sweeping election reform bill in the nation’s history, the legislation was prompted by the turmoil in Florida’s presidential election two years before.
HAVA called for the federal government to appropriate $3.8 billion for election reform over four years. Arizona’s share of that amount — $58 million —will pay for replacing equipment in nine of the 15 counties with outdated systems. By 2005 or 2006, a touch screen voting machine is also expected to be in each precinct, primarily to help handicapped voters.
The new system is expected to eliminate the troublesome situations in the past that led to some punch-card ballots being tossed out, such as where no choices were indicated, or where voters chose too few (an under vote) or too many (an over vote) candidates.
In future elections, Mohave County voters will sign in at polling places, receive a paper ballot, go into a polling booth, and fill in ovals next to their choices. Tempert said that the new machine would read any kind of pen, pencil or marker, but not crayons.
Voters may notice different voting booths, too, after Tempert obtained a supply from Washington state where they were being given away.
Voters will lay completed ballots in a recessed area atop the waist-high, optical scanner, where they will be fed into the machine. The scanner will read both sides of the paper ballot at once. If the machine detects no voting errors, a number will be displayed, indicating a properly cast ballot.
If an error is found, the ballot will be ejected, and a message will direct the voter to the election inspector on site. Inspectors will tell voters in this case that a problem occurred, and offer them the choice to vote again, or resubmit the ballot as marked.
Tempert said some voters choose to mark their ballots in unusual ways to make a point, such as those who say, “I don’t want any of those bums on the ballot, so I’m not voting for any of them.”
To resubmit a ballot with errors as a voter may choose, the inspector opens the machine, enters a code, and the ballot will be entered. However, in those races where a voting error has occurred, a vote will not be counted.
Paper ballots with no errors are stored in the machine, providing a permanent physical record of votes.
Write-in votes are sent to a separate part of the machine where they will be counted by hand later. The remainder of the ballot without write-ins will be scanned normally.
Rather than count the ballots as they are deposited, the machine totals the results at the end of the voting day. Poll workers will not count the paper ballots when voting is over. Instead, they will retrieve a register tape inside the machine that has the vote totals.
Information from the machine will be automatically tallied and sent through phone lines using a modem to a telephone bank at the county election office in Kingman, where it will be downloaded to a computer.
Election results will be available a couple of hours sooner than in the past, Tempert said, but only the unofficial totals. Provisional ballots and absentee ballots will not be part of this total, since they will be counted after the precinct totals are in. Official results will be available a couple of hours after the unofficial results.
Ballots gathered from early voting will be transported to Kingman, as in the past, and scanned by a machine.
Since the polls, by law, must be open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., the machine has an internal battery back up that will kick in case of a power failure.
Responding to concerns that the machine could be altered or rigged to produce incorrect results, Tempert said that only software programmers at Diebold Elections System, the firm this state has contracted with, are capable of writing a code to corrupt the system, and even then, procedures are in place that would make it unlikely that the rewritten program would be used.
He said that even if a software programmer changed the codes, the change would have to survive review by two independent national testing institutes, and approval by the secretary of state.
Tempert said he can’t program the machine for inaccurate voting. He is only trained to program information about the offices, candidates and races in the county.
He said, “We’ve heard stories about Diebold and hacking and software, too, but nothing they do is networked on the Internet. Nobody has access to this but me, locally, and I can’t do that. It’s well beyond my scope.”
He said he has faith that the machines will work accurately, an opinion echoed by Gerald E. Benson, chairman of the District III Mohave County Democrats.
“It will help voting and make it more accurate,” Benson said. “There’s no question about it in my mind. This machine is the future. Our poll workers can learn this. They’re not dummies, just inexperienced at it, that’s all.”
The machines used in Mohave County are newer versions of a 20-to 25-year-old model. Diebold is one of the two largest voting equipment vendors in the nation.
A complete scanner unit costs about $5,000. The cost of the paper ballots is extra. Lake Havasu City will have 85 scanners for its 73 precincts, allowing extras for spares and training.
“So far, from what I’ve seen, this is real good,” said Thunderbolt precinct committee person Helen Green. “I like the paper trail, especially after what happened after the last presidential election.”
Tempert will conduct a training session on the machine in Lake Havasu City on Jan. 29 for poll workers.
For the presidential preference election, three precincts will be open with between 18 and 23 poll workers present.
You may contact the reporter at sdunham@havasunews.com.