Voting machines edict upsets election officials

BEAUFORT: Federal and state-led reforms jar county plans.

By Frank Morris
Carolina Morning News

Beaufort County election officials have launched a campaign to get out of a state plan for a uniform, statewide electronic voting machine system.

They say they want to eventually switch over to a paperless balloting system, as the state is encouraging to comply with a federal election reform measure.

But they want to be able to pick the machine model that Beaufort County will use and still get full federal and state funding for the upgrade - expected to cost more than $1 million.

Under the plan they want changed, the county will lose out on funding if it does not go along with the big plan for a uniform statewide system, county and state election officials said Friday.

Tom Hatfield, chairman of the Beaufort County Voter Registration and Election Commission, and Agnes Garvin, the county's elections director, are leading the revision charge.

"We'd rather do our own thing," Hatfield said Friday.

He said the state panel that picked the voting act compliance plan last year built a good argument that a uniform state system would make it easier to train election workers and voters, lay out ballots and do election computer programming.

But Beaufort County election officials do not need that help, he said.

It all has to do with the Help America Vote Act of 2002, a federal law spurred by Florida's punch-card ballots mess on which the 2000 presidential election of George Bush over Al Gore turned.

The act establishes minimum election administration standards and pays the bulk of costs for upgrades, starting with replacement of punch-card and lever voting machines.

South Carolina's implementation plan for all 46 counties - including voter registration s and outreach programs - calls for spending $48.5 million through 2006. By the budget, the state provides $2.1 million and the federal government pays the rest, according to a State Election Commission report.

Electronic voting machines eliminate punch-card or paper ballots and record votes placed directly on them by key-button, touch-screen or other methods. Local and state election officials said Friday that numerous safeguards make both optical-scan and electronic voting machine systems virtually tamper-proof, and some recent opposition to the systems is misleading.

Under a four-year phase-in system started in 2003, South Carolina's 10 remaining counties with punch-card systems will get upgrades to electronic voting machines this year.

In 2005, Beaufort County and the 11 other counties with optical-scan voting machines are to get the upgrade for a projected $4.8 million. Optical-scan machines electronically read and count marked paper ballots fed into them.

In 2006, Jasper County and the 23 other counties that already use direct-recording electronic machines are to get upgrades to the state-favored model.

Jasper County has used electronic voting machines since the mid-1980s, said Donna Royson, deputy state elections director. The county upgraded to a newer version in 2002, buying 50 machines for $3,500 each.

Beaufort County replaced its old punch-card ballots system in 2000 with an optical-scan voting machine system purchased for $578,884. The price included 90 machines - one for each precinct polling place and a few backups - and software.

A deal cut with the seller, calls for Diebold Election Systems - which bought out the original vendor - to buy back the machines for about $500,000 as trade-ins for electronic voting machines, Garvin said.

Hatfield and Garvin said that deal was negotiated because local election officials anticipated the county would want to move up to electronic voting machines after using optical-scan machines as a transition from punch-cards.

If the state picks a different vendor than Diebold for its uniform system and Beaufort County goes along, it would lose the trade-in money.

Beaufort officials want to be able to use Diebold and get the trade-in money and tap the state and federal funding for new machines, too, Garvin said.

If Beaufort County officials end up going along with the state's uniform plan, they could sell the old machines to someone else and probably get about $250,000, Garvin said.

Diebold is one of five vendors that responded to a state Budget and Control Board division's request for proposals for sale of electronic voting machines. The submission deadline was Feb. 9. An evaluation team of state and county election officials is reviewing the proposals to make a choice, state officials said.

Garvin said she strongly doubts that Beaufort County officials would end up going it alone if state officials stick with the uniform voting machines plan.

"It's not that they couldn't, but it wouldn't be financially feasible," she said.

But local election officials will try to get the plan changed before the state target date for Beaufort County to get new machines in 2005, when some municipal elections will occur but not state or federal elections.

They also are opposing a bill in the state Legislature that would require a uniform voting system for all counties, Garvin said.

Hatfield said he has made four trips to Columbia lobbying to get the uniform election machines plan changed.

Garvin said that Hatfield, speaking on behalf of Beaufort County and several other counties, read their opposition to the uniform voting machines rule into the record of the South Carolina Association of Registration and Election Officials at its recent conference on Hilton Head.

"Our next step is to bring this before the County Council," she said. She anticipates that the council will be asked to join the fight at its March 22 meeting.

In addition, local election officials are asking several groups to join their cause, including the South Carolina Association of Counties and the National Association of Counties, she said.

At the state election office in Columbia, Royson said that the decision to go to a uniform voting system was made by a task force following rules of the federal act.

"They said a statewide system, so we accepted the federal money based on that plan. If we deviate from that plan, we have to give the money back," Royson said.

In a survey sent to 46 counties by the state elections office, Beaufort, Greenwood and Allendale counties' officials said they would only participate in a uniform system if certain conditions were met. The other counties agreed to a uniform system, Royson said.

Garvin, however, said 11 counties want the right to pick their own systems.

"I think each county should make their own decision as to which electronic system they go to, because each county would know which one would be best for their particular county," Garvin said.

On the Internet

The State Election Commission's Web site provides detailed information about the U.S. Help America Vote Act of 2002. It includes the South Carolina plan for implementation using electronic voting machines.

Go to http://www.state.sc.us/scsec/hava.htm