County gets reimbursed for optical scan equipment
By RENEE JEAN\Daily Journal Assistant Managing Editor  16 August 2004

St. Francois County has gotten the money it was promised as reimbursement for the optical scan equipment it purchased shortly after the 2000 election.

The Secretary of State Matt Blunt's office sent the county a check for $93,937. The money was filtered through Blunt's office from federal sources, and was part of the Help America Vote Act. That federal initiative included a partial buyout of punch card systems.

The county spent about $225,000 total for the optical scan voting equipment now in use.

The money sent by Blunt's office will go back into the general fund, St. Francois County Clerk Mark Hedrick said, since that is where the money for the county's purchase of the new system originated.

Nationwide, Congress appropriated $325 million for the buyout, and Missouri received $11.5 million of that for the 43 counties that used punch card voting systems in the 2000 election cycle.

The Help America Vote Act was a result of election problems in Florida that year.

A court eventually ruled that no further recounts could take place because the very act of recounting the punch card ballots used in the election was changing the results.

It was suggested that optical scan systems would eliminate such problems, and a buyout of punch card systems was included in HAVA.

Replacement of punch card systems was not federally mandated, however, and governments that participated in the buyout program had to chip in a substantial portion on their own.

State funding was based on the number of punch card systems being used in election districts across the state.

St. Louis county, St. Louis City, Kansas City and at 40 other election jurisdictions in the state were using punch card voting in 2000.

Any of the punch card buyout money that is not used by November 2006 will be returned to the federal government.

St. Francois County officials have indicated many times in the past that they are pleased with the optical scan system. They feel it has streamlined the process and made it much faster.

A voter marks his ballot and puts it into the machine with his or her own hand. The person can see that the ballot has been counted on the spot, and a number display keeps a tally of how many ballots have been scanned.

An over-voted ballot will be rejected on the spot, so the person knows they made a mistake and can correct it if they wish.

If they wish to submit the ballot as is, a supervisor can over ride the machine.

While ballots are tallied by the computer scan system as they are put into the machine, the results of the tally aren't available to anyone - not even poll workers - until after the polls close, but at that time, the entire tally is downloaded to a receiving unit at the St. Francois County Courthouse, and the results are displayed immediately.

The download usually takes place by phone, but the machines can also be hooked up directly to the receiving unit if necessary.

If a hand recount is necessary, there are no hanging chads to contend with. The ballots have circles that voters fill in with a magic marker pen, and those are not affected in any way by a routine hand recount.