Due to new laws, Scott County may have to trash new voting equipment
By Deirdre Cox Baker

Scott County’s “state-of-the-art” vote counting machines could be headed for the garbage dump if the county does not win an exemption from the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA.

Auditor Karen Fitzsimmons told the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday that the pricey equipment is being challenged according to the standards for HAVA, the legislation that arose from the 2000 presidential election dispute.

Iowa is in a particularly bright spotlight these days because it is considered one of the battleground states for the 2004 presidential race.

Scott County Auditor Karen Fitzsimmons says there is no good reason to junk $500,000 worth of accurate and reliable voting equipment that should be good for another five years just to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act.

 The current voting equipment will be used for the Nov. 2 election, the auditor said. But there is a January 2006 deadline for all Iowa counties to be linked by a centralized statewide computer system.

Under one scenario, all Iowa voters would use computer terminals to vote. Scott County uses an optical-scanning system that counts ballots at each of 63 precincts. Fitzsimmons wrote Iowa Secretary of State Chet Culver to say the county’s “state-of-the-art” equipment “has proven both accurate and reliable and that there is no good reason to replace it.”

“What we have is perfectly adequate,” she told the supervisors during the board’s committee-of-the-whole session Tuesday morning. “I expect it to be grandfathered in. I told Chet there is no reason to take $500,000 worth of equipment to the dump.”

Culver responded by saying, “The federal law is very clear in terms of which machines will be acceptable under HAVA and there’s no grandfathering option now,”

The county’s voting equipment was installed in 1997 and is supposed to have about a 12-year life-span. Scott County’s system is also used by Polk, Linn, Johnson and other more populous counties in the state.

The Secretary of State’s office has been working out the HAVA requirements for two years and has made public the expected impact on Iowa counties. Federal money totaling about $30 million will be distributed around the state, but it is not yet known how much will go to the counties.

Culver said the Iowa Legislature has until May 8 to decide whether to spend $764,000 to obtain the federal funds. He suggested the public contact its state legislators and urge them to resolve the issue so the $30 million will be released.

Fitzsimmons has lots of company when it comes to concern about the future of her county’s voting machines. Auditors in Cedar, Clinton and Muscatine counties all said they hope to learn more about what is expected. Estimates range from a $105,000 expenditure in Clinton County, which already has voting machines with computer terminals, to a possible $350,000 price tag in Muscatine County, which must replace its entire system.

Officials at the auditor’s office in Van Buren County, the only Iowa county that still uses paper ballots, said they may lease new voting machines to comply with HAVA.

Although federal support is still unknown, Scott County will purchase 63 new voting machines accessible to people with disabilities at a total cost of $390,000, Fitzsimmons said. If the optical-scanning machines must be replaced, that would be an additional $378,000. New software to comply with state registration rules will run about $150,000, and the county will pick up $10,000-$15,000 for postage on absentee voter envelopes.