Voting machine panel won't follow Georgia's model

By Thomas Burr
The Salt Lake Tribune

    PROVO A state committee has changed its vote on how to the equipment Utahns will soon use to cast ballots.
    The state Voting Equipment Selection Committee, meeting Thursday in Provo, scrapped plans to model the purchase of new voting technology after the process Georgia used.
    The committee says it now will broadly define what it is looking for and then from what vendors propose.
    Committee member Ray Palmer, the state's director of information technology, said the state's criteria would not be specific. "It wouldn't be about features; it would be about the philosophy of the system."
    Georgia, whose voters use touch-screen computers, outlined in its plan specific standards for the machines.
    The committee has been charged with making the final choice in Utah's switch from punch cards to newer voting technology, as called for by the federal Help America Vote Act.
    State officials plan to have at least one new voting device which would allow the visually impaired to vote without assistance in each polling place this year, but a delay in buying equipment may change that deadline.
    Nearly all Utahns would vote on the new machines in 2006, according to the state plan. 
 
    The committee proposed that the machines also must include a paper record of each vote. This is a hot issue with some computer experts, who fear hackers could manipulate vote totals. Committee members said a decision on paper records would be made later.
    Also Thursday, Salt Lake County Councilman Steve Harmsen, a committee member, said he still had questions about the cost of the voting transition. He worries that counties would be stuck with a large bill to buy enough machines and then securely store them .
    "I feel like I'm being offered free tires but I have to buy the car" to accept the offer, Harmsen said.
    Committee members, though, punted a discussion of costs until later into the process.