New systems offer solution to punch cards
By Patrick Waldron Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Tuesday, March 30, 2004

By the next mid-term election in November 2006, the federal government wants to eliminate punch-card ballots.

Kane County Clerk John Cunningham thinks he's found a system to make that work in this county's 220 precincts and at the cheapest price.

The optical scan ballot and automatic vote verification system to do it was presented Monday to a new voting sub-committee of the county board and officials from the Aurora Election Commission.

It's called InkaVote and functions the same as the punch-card setup Kane County voters are familiar with. But instead of punching a hole in a card, the pin is replaced with a small marker to draw a tiny dot on a ballot.

"It is very much like the punch card you see today," said Sandra Hed, president of the St. Charles-based company Election Works. "The reason we went this way is that it is easier for the voter."

After the 2000 presidential election controversy in Florida that familiarized everyone with terms like ‘hanging chad,' Congress passed the Help America Vote Act. That law requires the elimination of punch-card systems by 2006.

It also required new methods to allow disabled Americans a chance to vote without assistance and says election jurisdictions need machines to verify ballots are correct when they are cast. The last requirement is designed to eliminate instances where ballots are thrown out because a person votes for the same office more than once.

The system presented to the elections committee would put Kane County in full compliance for about $880,000. That's if one voter verification unit was put in each precinct.

Computer touch-screen voting systems would likely cost millions more, Cunningham said.

As part of the legislation, the federal government is giving Kane County $682,560 to meet the new election requirements.

That makes the Election Works' ballots and California-based Unisyn Voting Solutions' ballot verification system the best and most economical option, Cunningham said.

But some of this is still in the testing phase. The actual Election Works ballots were used in Los Angeles County during this year's primary elections but the voter verification system has not yet been tested.

Steve Schwickert, Unisyn's director of strategic development, said 40 precincts in Los Angeles County will be using his company's machines in the November general election.

According to the design, a voter would be able to take his or her completed ballot over to the machine and have it scanned for errors. If something is wrong, the ballot would be returned to the voter just like a card slid into an ATM machine. The voter also would get a printout explaining the problem.

If the ballot is correct, the machine would the ballot into the ballot box and electronically tabulate the result.