Delaying payment is justified

Palladium-Item (IN)  03 September 2004

Wayne County officials made the right move when they decided not to pay for a new election system until it is certified by the state. Beyond that, the county clerk and the election board should be ready with a plan if the company cannot provide a state-certified voting system in time for the Nov. 2 election.

On Wednesday, the Wayne County Council, acting on the advice of County Clerk Sue Ann Lower, put off paying Election Systems & Software for a $1.6 million touch screen voting system called iVotronics. The system was not certified before the election in May but the Indiana Elections Commission allowed Wayne County, and others, to use it, on the firm's promise that system would be certified before November. The promise has not yet been kept, and at least four Indiana counties, including Wayne, are faced with the prospect that the state won't allow the iVotronics system to be used this fall.

In Johnson County, the county clerk and her election board decided on Aug. 19 to use a paper-based balloting system in November. That's because ES&S told them it could not assure a certified system would be in place there before Oct. 1. State law requires counties to have absentee ballots printed before then and Jill Jackson, the county clerk, said they did not want to take a chance on a system they might not be allowed to use for the election.

ES&S has said the problem doesn't affect the counting of ballots. The problem is that firmware software that is installed in the computer was d after a previous version was certified by Indiana. The d version was used in the four counties in question, and it shouldn't be hard to get it certified, ES&S says. Still, in the four months since the last election, the problem has not been corrected.

If Wayne County will not be allowed to use the iVotronics system on Nov. 2, then ES&S should be willing to do what it has in Johnson County. There, ES&S is paying for paper ballots to be printed and it is furnishing a system that counts the paper ballots when they are passed through a scanner.

There is urgency in whatever happens. The election is less than two months away.

As Wayne County's top election official, Lower faces the absentee balloting deadline and the prospect of having to train election workers on a different system if the iVotronics cannot be used here.

The issues being put before the American people in this election are crucial and the outcome will affect policies and politics the world over for at least the coming four years.

Voters deserve a system that can be completely trusted and there is little time left to ensure that it will be.