County eyes electronic voting equipment

By MARC SCHANZ, Staff Writer

Thursday, March 11, 2004 3:02 PM PST

While most of the attention on Imperial County's elections has been focused on ballots cast March 2, the county Board of Supervisors may soon be looking at changing the way the Imperial Valley votes.

Coming out of recent discussions regarding the elections process in the county, Imperial County Counsel Ralph Cordova confirmed Wednesday that his office is looking at a deal between Shasta County and Oakland-based Sequoia Voting Systems to bring electronic touch-screen voting equipment to Imperial County.

The move is part of the voting upgrades required by state and federal legislation, he added.
Cordova said Imperial County has the option to "piggyback," or add its name, to the existing contract Shasta County has that provides for new hardware, software and voting equipment.

After examining the contract, Cordova said it appears it complies with the federal Help America Vote Act that requires Imperial County to do away with its punch-card ballot system by 2006.

Imperial County Registrar of Voters Dolores Provencio has stated electronic voting machines will cost upward of $300,000, with costs running from $3,000 to $5,000 each.

Cordova had no further details Wednesday on the cost of the contract or the number of machines the county could purchase.

Shasta County, in the northern reaches of the Sacramento Valley, has experienced nothing but success with its current machines, officials said Wednesday.

According to Shasta County Clerk and Registrar of Voters Ann Reed, a contract was approved with Sequoia in May 2003 to provide 438 touch-screen voting machines.

 
The county has 88,000 registered voters, Reed said, and even after the hectic recall election — during which her office had all returns by 10:30 at night — and a busy November 2003 election, she had nothing but praise for the new touch-screen voting.

"We put a piggyback clause in there because one of our neighbors (Tehama County), wanted to their equipment as well," Reed said. "We wanted to give them, and others, the option of getting in on the deal."

Sequoia provides election services in more than 32 states and has contracted to provide voting machines and services to Riverside, San Bernardino and Napa counties.

The Help America Vote Act of 2002, a wide-ranging elections reform bill that was engineered after the troubled 2002 presidential election, stipulates that all states and local jurisdictions comply with updating their voting equipment by Jan. 1, 2006.

Supervisor Gary Wyatt said that by not going through a new proposal process, the county could save thousands of dollars on the new equipment by taking advantage of the contract.

Sequoia Systems was the company picked by Provencio last year during a tryout process of electronic voting companies, Wyatt added.

"We are mandated to our voting machines, but (state and federal) financing is only available for a certain period," Wyatt said. "If we can take advantage of this and put it together, we can save quite a bit on our end."

Electronic voting has not been without its critics, who have said that voting by touch-screen can be easily manipulated and that there is no "paper trail" for voters to confirm.

California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley has responded to questions about touch-screen voting by requiring all new systems be equipped with voter verified paper audits by July 1, 2005.

Shelley alerted all 58 of California's registrars about the new requirements in a letter sent Nov. 21, 2003.

Reed said in Shasta's case, it has a clause in its contract where it will pay no more than $200 each for receipt printers to attach to the voting machines. Cordova said the contract will be presented to the board soon, possibly at its meeting Tuesday.