Officials OK voting machines for county

 

By: MARGARET GIBBONS , Norristown Times Herald Staff
09/07/2004

 

COURTHOUSE - Montgomery County officials do not anticipate any problems with the county's electronic voting machines in the upcoming presidential election when voter turnout traditionally is higher than in other years.

"I am 100 percent sure that we have one of the top and the most secure machines in the country," county voter services Director Joseph R. Passarella said.
Passarella was responding to questions concerning whether equipment should be added to the voting machines to provide voters with a paper copy of their votes and to ensure a "paper trail" to double-check that votes were being recorded properly.
While the issue of the so-called "paper trail" has been debated nationally, Passarella said the state's association of election officials and the state chapter of the League of Women Voters are opposed to such a process.
"There are some on the national level who, if they had their way, would have everyone go back to the old paper ballots and that is not acceptable," county Commissioner Thomas J. Ellis, who chairs the county's election board, said.
While a "paper trail" may sound good, it is not practical, Ellis said. Long lines would develop as voters waited for their paper receipts, he said.
More importantly, it could lead to voter fraud and intimidation, according to Ellis.
Approached by a partisan poll worker, a voter now can tell that worker he or she is voting for the worker's candidate while voting for anyone they chose in the privacy of the voting booth, he said.
But what happens if that poll worker demands to see the voter's paper receipt to make sure the vote was cast for the worker's candidate, Ellis said.
Passarella said the results tallied by the county's electronic voting machines never have been legally challenged.
H. Bruce Gordon, a Democratic North Penn school board member who lost his seat in last year's elections, had questioned the reliability of the county's 1,100 voting machines.
He said one voter had told him that, when the voter voted "no" on the open-space referendum question, the straight-Republican lights on the machine came on.
As a result of Gordon's complaints, the machines were tested and no problem was discovered.
"When these absurd comments are made, they take on a life of their own and the myth and legend grows unless we immediately deal with them," commissioners Chairman James R. Matthews said.
"I am confident we have good machinery and software," Matthews said. "These machines are very voter friendly and I think people are very comfortable with them."
The county has used the Sequoia-Pacific Corp. electronic voting machines since the 1996 November general election.
Initially, the county in 1994 had purchased MicroVote electronic voting machines.
Frustrated by repeated Election Day problems that it blamed on those machines and the software, the county dumped the MicroVote machines and replaced them with the Sequoia machines.