Race on to ready voting machines before primary

by Susie Vasquez
July 30, 2004

The race is on to ready Douglas County's new touch-screen voting machines before the primary election on Sept. 7.

Clerk-Treasurer Barbara Reed and her staff have been hustling to prepare the equipment and most of the 160 voting machines have been checked and are ready, but the required printers have not arrived.

The state-mandated printers allow voters to review their choices after the vote has been cast. A printed copy of the vote is displayed, then secured within the printer to serve as a permanent record.

"The paper vote is not a receipt," Reed said. "And no name is recorded with the vote."

Two card activators needed to program individual ballots could not be repaired on-site and must be replaced. A couple of audio units for blind voters must also be returned, Reed said.

The primary is just six weeks away and the clock is ticking.

"It's not the clock that's bothering me. It's the locomotive running down the track," Reed said. "We really need those audio units and card activators."

Security of the vote became major issue following the 2000 presidential election and the system has a number of safeguards. The machines operate independent of any other computer, making it impossible to tap into the system, Reed said.

On voting day, two cartridges are loaded into the machines, one with the election program and a second to record the results. The cartridges are sealed and when the vote is cast, it is transferred to the results cartridge.

At the end of the day, the seal is broken. The voter cartridges are removed, placed in a sealed plastic sack and taken to election center where the seal is broken and the votes counted.

Douglas County is one of three regional training sites in the state and in addition to getting the equipment ready, officials here have been training other key personnel from Storey, Lyon and Mineral counties, Reed said.

Reno and Elko also serve as regional sites. Clark County has conducted successful touch-screen elections for seven years and isn't participating, Reed said.

The machines are built by Sequoia Voting Systems, a company that provides election services in more than thirty-five states and has more than 48,000 electronic voting machines deployed across the nation.

They weren't cheap.

The basic equipment cost $9.3 million, funded through the Federal Voting Act, is just part of the expense, Reed said.

Douglas County officials rented a special climate-controlled election center just off Airport Road in Minden for $25,000 a year and the machines must be powered up every month for 24 hours. Each printer must be powered up for 8 hours.

The decision to decertify the old punch card system was made at the federal level. Nevada was given a 2006 deadline to complete their conversion, but punch cards will be illegal in Nevada as of Sept. 1, Reed said.