Voting machine upgrade scrapped
By Neil Vigdor
Staff Writer

July 19, 2004

The town has abandoned a plan to replace its mechanical lever-operated voting machines with optical scanners for the November election because of a misunderstanding over the types of equipment allowed under state law and who would pay.

To comply with federal mandates, Greenwich was preparing to purchase 13 optical scanners, similar to those used to score standardized tests, for about $146,000.

The scanners would have taken five years to pay off and would have been allocated to each of the town's dozen polling locations, with one as backup. Voters would feed their hand-marked ballots into the machines.

Greenwich earmarked nearly $30,000 in its 2004-05 budget for new voting machines, which will be required nationwide in two years under the Help America Vote Act of 2002.

But town officials said they recently learned that the secretary of the state's office had yet to develop a uniform set of standards for new voting machines. Some people warned that the office could recommend technology other than optical scanners.

"So there's no way we would be right in going forward at this time," First Selectman Jim Lash said. "We believed at the time we budgeted that the state had made up its mind and that we were on the right track, and we wanted to get on with it."

A spokesman for Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz said the state would issue a request for proposal to manufacturers of electronic voting machines in the fall, outlining its needs, timetable, budget and standards for modernizing equipment.

State officials estimated that they have $30 million in federal money at their disposal to fund the entire initiative, which was prompted by Florida's controversial ballot recount during the 2000 presidential election.

"So one thing we don't want to do, we certainly don't want to use federal money for machines that may not meet federal standards," said Larry Perosino, Bysiewicz's communications director.

Perosino estimated that there were 750 polling locations statewide, with 3,300 voting machines 90 percent are of the mechanical lever variety.

He was optimistic the state would meet the deadline for complying with the Help America Vote Act.

"So there should be new voting machines in place by 2006, but there could be some in place by 2005," he said.

Perosino also noted that some communities are already using optical scanners, but said the machines do not comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act because of their limitations for voters with visual impairments.

Greenwich owns nearly 70 mechanical voting machines, according to town officials, who said the town would save money by waiting for the state to pay for newer technology.

State Rep. Livvy Floren, R-149th District, a ranking member of the Government Administration and Elections Committee, agreed with decision to delay the changes.

"It's probably just as well not to do it this time," Floren said. "This is such an important (election)."