Our Voice: Give touch-screen voting machines a chance
Call to ‘abandon’ electronic voting is overreaction

The Desert Sun
March 17th, 2004
A bipartisan duo of state senators has jumped the gun in their call for the state to abandon use of the high-tech touch-screen voting machines for the upcoming presidential election.

The March 2 primary was the first in California after the phase-out of the punch-card ballot, which gained notoriety in the 2000 recount in Florida.

Were there snafus with the machines in the March 2 primary? Sure. And they are inexcusable.

Hundreds of voters were forced to cast provisional paper ballots when the electronic voting machines wouldn’t work. In Orange County, some 7,000 voters were given the wrong ballots. In San Diego, only 64 percent of polling places opened on time due to technical malfunctions. Had this been a close election, we could have had another Florida debacle on our hands. Registrars in those respective counties should make sure the machines are fully tested before the next election.

There are bound to be kinks with any new technology. It must be given sufficient time in order to get the bugs worked out. Sens. Don Perata, D-Oakland, and Ross Johnson, R-Irvine, haven’t allowed that to happen before blowing things out of proportion, calling for the state to abandon use of the high-tech systems for the upcoming presidential election. Instead, they are carrying on like they know more than country registrars.

They need to take a step back and re-evaluate the situation.

“They have not thought this through,” said Riverside County Registrar of Voters Mischelle Townsend. “You might have some of these initial issues, but who’s to say it won’t run smoother the next time? We just held our 28th election with touch-screen screens and we’ve had smooth elections every time.”

According to Townsend, Riverside County was among the first in the state to use state-of-the-art, touch-screen voting booths, saving the county millions of dollars by eliminating hundreds of hours of labor and facilitating the vote-counting process.

In the event of a recount, election officials will be able to complete the task in less time than a manual recount, benefiting voters, taxpayers and the candidates.

The beauty of the touch-screen machines is that they also preclude voting more than once. In other words, no ballots are thrown out because voters accidentally punched the hole of more than one person in a race on the ballot.

Depending on the election, the candidates’ names disappear from the screen when the voter makes a choice. If the voter reconsiders, the screen reproduces all candidates’ names. No more guessing games for election supervisors.

The technology also provides more accurate voting and faster results.

So far, the state has given $50 million to counties to help them upgrade their voting machines with much of that money going to counties moving to electronic voting. It would be a waste of taxpayer money to toss the machines out the window without ample opportunity to prove themselves.

“The responsible position is to recall these things until we are sure damn sure they work well,” Perata said.

No, the responsible thing is not to overreact and create a mountain out of a molehill.

Voters must have some assurance their vote will be counted fairly and accurately. The best way to do that is with touch-screen voting machines. County registrars need a chance to work out the bugs.