New voting equipment hits snags in Illinois
By Stephanie Sievers, Dispatch/Argus Springfield Bureau

SPRINGFIELD Only one-third of Illinois' counties will have new election equipment up and running in time for the March 16 primary.

The goal after the 2000 presidential election debacle was to fix the problems of the nation's voting system by 2004, including getting rid of the punch card ballots that had caused so much controversy in Florida.

But delays at the federal level and a lack of funding have slowed the effort. Voters in 22 states still will be using punch card ballots in elections this year, said Doug Chapin, director of the Election Reform Information Project.

Thirty-five Illinois counties will have switched from punch cards to new optical scan ballots by next month's primary, but none in the Quad-Cities area. Local counties are either waiting for equipment to arrive, waiting for funding or waiting to see if better voting technology will become available.

Punch card ballots in which voters pick their candidate by punching through a perforated hole on a paper ballot has been the voting method of choice in most Illinois counties for at least 20 years.

The punch card system was criticized some election experts say unfairly after the Florida recount confusion in 2000.

Prior to that race, most election officials had been happy with punch card ballots, but afterward there was a perception the system was broken, said Doug Lewis, of Election Central, an election information clearinghouse.

So the federal government passed the Help America Vote Act in 2002, promising to send $3.86 billion to the states to make changes. Until recently only $1.5 billion had been approved and less than half of that had actually been released, Mr. Chapin said.

The election reforms include everything from requiring states to set up a statewide, electronic database of eligible voters to requiring that every polling place have a voting machine in place for disabled voters.

But the reform that garnered the most attention was the push to dump punch card ballots. As an incentive, the federal government is allocating $3,192 per election precinct to replace old equipment. The federal money generally covers about half the cost, said Becky Glazier of the Illinois State Board of Elections.

Local money must pay for the rest. Some downstate counties can't afford changes and may have to stick with punch card ballots, forfeiting the federal money, Ms. Glazier said. Other counties are waiting, hoping they can come up with their share of the money before the extended deadline of 2006.

Mercer County is one of those deciding to wait it out. County Clerk Tom Hanson tried to sell the county board's finance committee on new voting equipment last fall, but was shot down.

The county could get about $109,000 in federal funding, but Bart Eshleman, chairman of the finance committee, said Mercer County just doesn't have the money this year to cover the local portion.

Henry County is moving ahead and already has ordered optical scan equipment, but it won't arrive until April or May, said County Clerk Barb Link. Switching will cost Henry County about $297,000, but $166,000 will come from federal funds.

``I think it's going to be a plus for the county. I think it's going to be easier, not just for voters but for the entire process,'' Ms. Link said.

With an optical scan system, voters fill in circles on paper ballots and then feed them into computer scanners, which read and record the choices. The machines will tell voters if they failed to vote on a particular race or inadvertently voted for too many candidates.

But Rock Island County Clerk Dick Leibovitz says the error rate for optical scan isn't much better than punch cards, and it could be more expensive to operate over time. Rock Island County used optical scan voting in the early 1980s, but had little success with it, he said.

The technology probably has improved, but Mr. Leibovitz said he's waiting to learn more about the higher-tech, ATM-style touch-screen ballots.

Some states, such as Georgia, have completely switched to touch-screen voting, but it can't be used yet in Illinois. Lawmakers passed a law last year allowing for touch-screen voting in Illinois, but the Illinois State Board of Elections still has to certify it.