Kane County can't find equipment to meet election law
By Patrick Waldron Daily Herald

Posted Wednesday, September 01, 2004

Kane County election officials have come up with a list of requirements for new voting equipment needed by 2006, but so far no vendors have products to meet those standards.

It's a problem faced by hundreds of election authorities around the country rushing to comply with new federal laws passed in the wake of the 2000 presidential election mess in Florida.

A key component of the law, the Help America Vote Act, calls for elimination of punch card ballots by the March 21, 2006, primary election. Kane County and Cook County are two of 306 counties across the country expected to use punch cards in November and are in need of a change, according to Washington, D.C.-based Data Services.

In two years, it's a good bet Kane County voters will see a new optical scan system with ballots similar to the forms students fill out while taking standardized tests, but that's not a guarantee.

None of the companies Kane County Elections Director Zeina Alame has talked to can meet the conditions of the law, which also requires at least one voting machine per polling place be accessible to handicap voters and requires all machines to have new error detecting technology.

Alame presented a draft of a request for proposals for new election equipment to members of the county board's election subcommittee Tuesday for consideration.

If approved, that request would ask companies to explain what they can offer the county. The companies would be expected to provide specifics about their equipment including storage specifications, level of maintenance and even on-site technical support.

"We have to get a vendor who understands how complicated our ballots get," Alame said, focusing on the need for companies with experience in Illinois.

The county also must buy equipment that has been certified by the federal government's Election Assistance Commission and the Illinois State Board of Education. The problem there is those certification standards haven't been completed yet.

But with millions of federal dollars on the line, Kane County is moving forward to find the company that will be in the best position to come through by 2006.

The proposal request under consideration seeks information about optical scan ballots, electronic ballots or a mix of the two.

Electronic ballots are widely considered the mechanism of the future, where a voter would run through a computer touch screen to cast a vote.

Widespread questions about the technology and how to produce a corresponding paper trail have Kane County leaders thinking seriously about older, more proven methods.

"To me what we should be looking at is optical scan," said Aurora Democrat Gerry Jones, chairman of the elections subcommittee.