Funds pledged for voting machines

New devices will be electronic in nature; purchase not expected until late 2005

By Karen Ducheneaux

American News Writer

Brown County has pledged matching funds to have electronic voting machines in place at each of its 22 precincts in time for the 2006 elections, according to county officials.

Although the exact cost for individual machines is not yet known, the South Dakota Secretary of State's Office has tentatively requested $21,000 in matching funds from Brown County to help pay for them.

Getting the machines in every voting precinct in South Dakota is the latest effort by the state to comply with the Help America Vote Act, passed in response to the Florida vote counting fiasco during the 2000 presidential election, Brown County Auditor Maxine Taylor said.

The machines are intended to allow handicapped voters to cast votes without requiring any assistance to ensure independent voting.

Congress has allocated $3.9 billion to ensure each voting precinct in the nation is equipped with electronic voting machines.

Each state will pick its own type of machine; South Dakota hasn't yet made its ion, Taylor said.

The machines will not be purchased until late next year and there are new machines entering the market all the time.

South Dakota will one type of machine for the entire state to guarantee uniformity and keep costs down, Taylor said.

Although there are many electronic voting machines currently available, Taylor said she knows of only one that leaves a "paper trail."

This means an actual ballot is put into the machine, the vote of the person in the booth is recorded, and the completed ballot comes back out. Other machines just record a total of all votes cast.

A paper trail is important for recounts, Taylor said. Without a document "you've got totals but you've got no verification," she said.

A lack of physical documentation could also be disastrous if a machine containing recorded votes broke down.