Election reform funds to be released

By Glenda Taylor
The Daily Times

Published March 25, 2004

Kerr County may be a step closer to receiving its share of $2.3 billion in federal funds targeted for voting equipment upgrades.

On Tuesday, the four-member Federal Elections Commission met for the first time and announced it could begin releasing funds to states as soon as Wednesday.

County Clerk Jannett Pieper said early indications are that Kerr County would receive around $50,000, an amount based on the number of precincts in each county.

“They were going by how many precincts the county had before redistricting,” she said. “Prior to redistricting, we had 19 precincts. Now we have 20.”

The funds will be used to purchase Direct Recording Electronic voting systems — an electronic version of the old lever system voting machine.

The DRE voting machines allow the disabled to vote without assistance.

“It’s similar to a touch-screen,” Pieper said.

According to the Federal Election Commission, there is no ballot required with the machines and many do not provide a voter-verifiable audit trail. However, other machines have the capability to print post-election audit trails and complete marked ballots stored in the computer’s memory.

An alphabetic keyboard often is available, as well, to allow for write-in votes.

Pieper said 20 DREs would be required — one for each precinct — but that number could double to 40 if Republicans and Democrats wanted separate machines in each precinct.

“Right now, they hold elections in the same location,” Pieper said, which would require that only 20 machines be purchased. She added that she saw no indication that the two parties would change that.

The DREs must be in place by 2006, Pieper said.

But the new voting systems won’t cut down on the work load at the clerk’s office, she said.

“Actually, it will add work,” Pieper said. “It will also cost for the programming of the machines prior to an election, in addition to the programming that is done now on our scanners.’

And testing will be required to ensure the machines are working properly.

“We will be required to run tests on them several times throughout the election process,” Pieper said.

Voting technology upgrade requirements are the result of the 2002 Help America Vote Act. The act doesn’t require states to replace lever and punch-card machines, but provides funding for upgrades to counties like Kerr that manually mark ballots that are then read electronically. States can opt for touch-screen or optical scan machines.