Elections officials say touch-screen machines now working OK

The Associated Press
2/9/04 4:40 PM

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) More than a year after Louisiana encountered its first problems with its new touch-screen voting machines, elections officials said Monday the machines are operating properly and the state should pay the rest of the bill for them.

The malfunctions and problems that created costly headaches have been fixed, First Assistant Secretary of State Al Ater told a House committee.

The state hadn't finished paying "a few hundred thousand dollars" of the $3 million price tag for the machines because of the problems, according to Ater.

"Y'all are satisfied enough to pay them now?" asked Rep. Billy Montgomery, D-Bossier City.

Ater said he is recommending that Secretary of State Fox McKeithen stop withholding payments to the Nebraska company Elections Systems and Software that supplied the machines.

The touch-screen voting machines malfunctioned during the 2002 fall elections. ES&S gave Louisiana new, replacement machines after the first set proved to be defective and elections officials complained that repairs were insufficient.

The machines are used in Ascension and Tangipahoa parishes and in more than 50 parishes for absentee voting.

At least two-thirds of the touch-screen machines malfunctioned, overheating and shutting down, according to elections officials. The broken machines did not lose count of votes, so election officials were able to extract totals.

The elections department paid $3 million for the 900 voting machines that later were replaced.

McKeithen, who took over the elections department last month, already said he is looking at scrapping the touch-screen machines as he works to standardize Louisiana's voting machines so that all parishes cast ballots with the same computerized equipment.

He said the replacement machines are not easily programmable to work with the secretary of state's office to compile statewide voting totals.