Punch card voting system still used in 12 West Virginia counties

By PAMELA BRUST Parkersburg News and Sentinel  05 September 2004

PARKERSBURG - Wood County election officials won't be losing any sleep general election night worrying about hanging, pregnant or dimpled chad.
Wood is among 43 counties in West Virginia that does not use the controversial punch card-style ballots. But 12 West Virginia counties use the punch card voting method, including Kanawha, the largest county in the state.

In West Virginia, three counties use the lever voting system; 10 use the oldest election system, the paper ballot; Cabell and recently Marion County converted to the newest method, the direct recording (computer touchscreen); 12 use punch cards; and 28 use optical scan.

Wood County used punch card ballots from around 1977 to 1999. Faced with the possibility of having to replace the aging equipment and purchase new tabulation software to make the system year-2000 compliant, county commissioners in 1999, on recommendation of Wood County Clerk Jamie Six, decided to convert to optical scan.

The optical scan ballot is marked by a voter with a special pencil, then tallied by a computer "reader," similar to the manner in which answers on standardized school tests are marked, according to Secretary of State Joe Manchin's office.

Six has personal experience with the punch cards, not only as the county's chief elections officer. While on vacation in Florida following the November 2000 election, Six visited one of the locales where election officials were frantically reviewing ballots in the presidential race. He said he still gets questions about the much-maligned punch cards when he speaks on elections at area schools and civic groups.

Controversy over use of the punch cards in the upcoming general election has again brought this voting system and the infamous chad - the plural form is the same as the singular - under scrutiny.

"Tabulation for the punch cards is very accurate if the cards are punched properly. The problem is with the actual equipment where you push the ballots in. Two things happened in Florida; one was hanging chad," Six said.

Rubber strips designed to grab the chad, small pieces of paper hanging off the back of the ballot, become dried up, brittle and cracked. Six noted because of the heat and humidity in Florida, the problem was probably worsened.

"The other problem was the dimpled chad. We had our machines cleaned out prior to every election, but if you don't clean them out, the chad builds up and there's nowhere to shove the new chad. That's why they end up with what they were calling pregnant chad. This is where the system failed," Six said.

Six noted the punch card machines are no longer manufactured, so counties still using the system will have to find refurbished used parts if replacements are needed.

During the last presidential year general election, optical scan was the most popular voting system in West Virginia, adopted by 28 counties and used by more than 270,000 voters, about 41 percent of the total who voted in that election, according to the secretary of state's office.

The punch card system was the first electronically tabulated ballot used in West Virginia, authorized by the Legislature in 1969 and extensively revised in 1982.

To use the system, a punch card is placed in a slot to align the holes on the card next to the corresponding candidate names. The voter uses a special tool to punch out the perforated chad so the tabulator will read the ballot correctly.

In the 2000 general election, only 12 of the 55 counties in West Virginia used the punch card, although the number of voters represented more than 41 percent of all West Virginians who cast ballots, according to the secretary of state's office.

The 2000 presidential election punch card fiasco in Florida led to federal legislation aimed at forcing those areas still using punch cards to switch to other systems.

"Punch cards are not to be used in any federal elections after the year 2006," Six said, noting the national regulations do not, however, prohibit use of the system by cities or counties, as long as there is not a federal candidate on the ballot.

Neighboring Ohio, considered a swing state in the upcoming presidential election, is facing its own battle on the punch card front. The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio has filed suit in federal court challenging the constitutionality of the punch card voting system. Ohio has 69 of its 88 counties still using this system, which equates to about 73 percent of registered voters in the Buckeye State.