No Hanging Chads In Our Vote Machines

BY FLORENCE GILKESON: Senior Writer The Pilot  19 September 2004

When you press the vote button and leave the polling booth, are you sure your vote is counted?

In the day of paper ballots, that question was applied to human vote counters — were they honest, reliable, alert?

Questions about reliability of the voting system have arisen since the United States first began holding elections, but it was not until the 2000 presidential election that this issue generated a nationwide uproar.

Setting aside questions about who really won that election, critics must focus on the fact that for the first time in modern history, Americans did not know the identity of their next president on the day after the election. Finally, it came down to a Supreme Court decision.

Answers to election questions are easier in Moore County.

The existing Electronic 1242 voting system has been used in Moore County since 1988 and has resulted in surprisingly few complaints.

People who don’t trust computer technology may be wary, but complaints are rare.

Voters do not deal with hanging chads or punch cards or butterfly ballots, just to name a few problems that erupted in Florida four years ago.

Moore County Elections Director Glenda Clendenin says the touch-screen system has served the county well, has been well maintained, and could serve Moore County for years to come.

HAVA (Help Americans to Vote Act) is a new federal law expected to result in junking this system.

And Congress did not appropriate funds to pay for a comparable replacement.

Moore County owns more than 120 electronic voting machines, representing a total investment of a half-million dollars.

Congress sent down word that election vote counting systems must meet new standards by 2006 but did not include sufficient funding to cover the cost.

In the meantime, the Moore County Board of Elections says the system now in use should work just fine until that 2006 deadline arrives.

The Moore County system offers the voter a view of the entire ballot. In the booth, the voter faces a ballot listing every office or issue to be decided. Beside the name of each candidate and issue is a square with a blinking light. The voter then presses the square beside the candidate or issue, activating a little red light that remains steady.

The voter can then review the ballot and see if he or she has voted correctly, and voted for every candidate and/or issue. At this point, the voter can correct errors or undergo a change of mind.

A person can vote a straight-party ballot for Republican or Democratic candidates and can even make a cross-over vote, if careful to make sure that he or she is not voting for more than one person per office.

Your vote is not official until you press the green “Vote” button. That’s when all your election decisions become official record.

One glitch that can ruin your vote is having a small child with you in the booth. Clendenin says there have been occasions when a child playfully presses the green button while the voter is concentrating on the ballot and not paying attention to the tot. It’s accidental but also means an automatic end to the voter’s time in the booth.

There is no going back and doing it again. The vote, correct or not, has been recorded, even if it represents only part of the voter’s wishes.

The balloting process has ended for that voter.

It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. Today, such mistakes are uncommon, because poll workers warn voters accompanied by children.

In the eyes of local election officials, this vote counting system is almost ideal, but it does have its drawbacks. It does not give the voter a receipt after the vote is cast. There are systems that provide a printout showing how he or she voted. Voters traditionally are not accustomed to this amenity anyway.

Backup in Place

Clendenin says that the system does have tabulation backup.

Once a vote is cast, that vote is tabulated and goes into the machine count and at the same time is recorded onto a microchip on a memory cartridge. The result is a double tabulation, or two sources of proof of voting totals. The total number of votes recorded on the machine must equal the number of registrants authorized to enter the booth.

Not only does it protect the counting process, it protects the voter’s privacy.

“I can read the total number of votes, but I can’t pick out the individual who cast the vote,” Clendenin says.

Newer systems are equally efficient but offer additional amenities, such as an identification number system, something that will be required of all new systems.

Clendenin says this is the reason that paper ballots must be used for absentee voting.

Otherwise, problems with the present system are almost nonexistent. Occasionally, a memory pack fills up and must be replaced, but this has happened rarely in the 16 years that the county has used Electronic 1242 machines.

“We bought all new memory packs so we wouldn’t have a problem,” she says.

So what happens if the machines break down or there is a power outage or another major problem?

The backup plan is simple: The county turns to paper ballots.

If, for any reason, a precinct becomes overwhelmed, paper ballots are already available as substitutes until the problem can be corrected. It’s a complication election officials do not need, but at least the temporary switch to paper ballots keeps the process moving. People get to vote, lines continue to move, and ballots can be counted the old-fashioned way.

With the present system, there’s a certain amount of manual counting anyway — absentee ballots, curbside and provisionals, for example.

Clendenin remembers only one case in which paper ballots were put to use in an emergency. It happened in Cameron Precinct in 2002 and did not last long.

“That’s my Plan B,” she says. “We always have paper ballots and always have ballot boxes.”

Equipped with battery backup, most machines start without power. They are manufactured in North Carolina by a company that pioneered the vote machine concept.

The polls open at 6:30 a.m., but poll workers arrive an hour earlier. Machines have already been delivered to polling places.

Clendenin cannot remember any election in which all precinct workers did not have their machines in operation within an hour. Once in a while, the county office receives a call from a frantic poll worker who can’t get one or more machines running, but that is rare, and the problem is quickly corrected, usually by Clendenin herself.

Plenty of things can go wrong on Election Day.

At a recent state Board of Elections training session, Clendenin served on a panel discussing “scare stories.” She didn’t have any scare stories, but others had plenty to relate.

In one county, it was once necessary to send a boat to rescue poll workers whose polling place was flooded during a hurricane.

“In some ways it’s like having a baby,” she says. “You swear you won’t ever do it again, but then you get over the pain and suffering.”

In the area of accuracy and backup, the system used in Moore County is largely in compliance with requirements of the Help Americans to Vote Act. Where it is not in compliance is largely with handicap accessibility.

Greater Consistency

Clendenin has no idea how long the county’s present machines will last, but she says they show no signs of breaking down. Through the years the machines and equipment have been upgraded, new software purchased and basic maintenance carried out on a regular basis. The machines are tested prior to elections.

North Carolina does not require that each of its 100 counties utilize the same ballot counting method. A few counties in North Carolina do use the punch cards that drew complaints from the Florida election four years ago, but Clendenin doubts very much that they will be used this year. She knows of no county with machines using butterfly ballots.

At least three other counties — Bladen, Wilson and Henderson — use touch screen electronic machines identical to the Moore County system. Some smaller counties still use paper ballots.

HAVA will require greater consistency. In particular, people with handicaps must have access to polling places. This means that polling booths must be large enough to accommodate a wheelchair, that audio ballots must be available to the visually handicapped, adequate signage must be posted, and handicapped parking spaces must be clearly designated.

Moore County’s machines can accommodate wheelchairs but are not equipped with other specialty equipment.

Congress did provide limited funding to help with the transformation.

Clendenin says that Moore County has already received two grants of about $13,000 apiece. One is being used to buy additional signs for polling places and to pave parking areas at public buildings used as polling places. Douglass Community Center in Southern Pines and the Circle V Fire Department at Vass are examples of public places where this paving is authorized.

For private property, such as churches, the county must make temporary arrangements.

The other grant is designated for technology. It will enable the county to buy a couple of new computers and a new telephone system.

Clendenin says the telephone system now in use was inherited from the Sheriff’s Department. The telephones still work, but the system is inadequate to handle the flood of calls received on election days.

No Money for Machines

But there is no money to replace voting machines.

Although it is technically possible to retrofit the system to meet HAVA standards, it appears that the process would be so expensive it would be more cost effective to buy new machines.

These are issues to be addressed by the county in the not too distant future.

HAVA requirements go into effect in 2006, but Clendenin does not expect state and local offices to receive the specifics on those requirements until 2005. That doesn’t leave state and county governments much time to make decisions and find money to pay for changes.

“There’s probably not enough aspirin for all the headaches we’re going to have,” she says.

Billie Mackey, chief judge in the Carthage Precinct, says the system works well and calls it a system that cannot be manipulated. The machines themselves cannot be tampered with.

As for illegal voters, the chances of an ineligible person voting or a registered voter voting more than once are almost non-existent. Poll workers come from various parts of the precinct — from different backgrounds, different political parties, different churches and country clubs. This diversity gives them knowledge of a broad cross section of the voting base.

Voters themselves are coming and going, and because they live in the same precinct, chances are that they know many of their fellow voters.

If a voter spots a person thought to be ineligible (residence outside the precinct, for example), he or she need only complain to the chief judge. The individual in question is allowed to vote by paper ballot as a provisional vote, its validity to be decided when the Board of Elections conducts the election canvass.

“Moore County has been served well by these machines,” Mackey says.

She says the Board of Elections, Clendenin and her staff have always gone the extra mile to ensure efficiency and to accommodate the needs of all people. She knows of no way in which the machines could be manipulated to favor one party, one candidate or one issue and says it is extremely unlikely that ineligible people are allowed to vote.

Furthermore, everyone eligible to vote has that opportunity.

Two major problems do exist.

One is the uninformed voter. The other is the high percentage of people who stay home on Election Day.