$3 million electronic investment dumped in favor of ballots
By Les Mahler
San Joaquin News Service
Last d: Tuesday, Nov 09, 2004 - 08:01:24 am PST

When Secretary of State Kevin Shelley decertified touch-screen voting in most counties last year, the Solano County Board of Supervisors wasn't going to wait around for Shelley to eventually change his mind.

Instead, supervisors voted in May to rid the county of its $3 million investment and permanently go with scanned ballots, said Deborah Seiler, elections manager for the Solano County registrar.

"It was a permanent solution," Seiler said Monday.

For San Joaquin County Registrar Deborah Hench, such a drastic solution isn't in the cards.

Hench hopes by June 2006 San Joaquin County will again use touch-screen voting machines. If there are special district or city elections in 2005, Hench said she hopes touch-screen voting will be in use then.

In San Diego and Kern counties, hope runs the same that in 2006 touch-screen voting will return, the two counties' registrars said.

Even though San Joaquin County had no problems with touch-screening voting in the March primaries, Shelley halted use of the Diebold TSX machines because they weren't federally certified, said Carol Dahmen, spokeswoman for the secretary of state.

"Diebold kept telling us that they were federally certified," Dahmen said. "But they weren't."

Next year, if Hench wants to use the Diebold Inc. machines, not only will the machines have to be federally and state certified, they must also be able to produce a verifiable voter paper trail, Dahmen said.

Shelley decertified touch-screen voting statewide last year, including all Diebold Inc., machines, because of such problems as power outages, no verifiable paper trail and blank screens.

It was only earlier this year after most counties worked out their problems that Shelley reversed his ruling, provided each county could present a verifiable voter paper trail, Hench said.

But in San Joaquin, Solano, San Diego and Kern counties, the secretary of state kept his edict in place because those counties had used the Diebold TSX model during the March primaries, which weren't federally or state certified, she said.

The difference in the Diebold TSX and Diebold TS models is that the TSX weighs less and voters can enlarge the screen themselves, Hench said.

Even though Solano County voters liked using the Diebold Inc., touch-screen voting machines, and it was faster in tallying vote results, Seiler said there was no "huge outcry" from voters when the county reverted to the bubble-ballot system.

In San Diego County, the loss of the touch-screen voting created a huge problem, said Registrar Sally McPherson.

"We have 1.1 million voters and 606 different ballots and four languages," she said. A touch-screen system would have made counting a lot easier, McPherson said.

Instead, McPherson and her staff are still manually counting write-in votes in the mayoral election.

"We now have 150,000 votes that have to be viewed manually," she said. "Touch-screen voting would it have made it easier."

In Kern County, the March primary counting was finished by 11 p.m., said registrar Ann Barnett. Using the scanning system, the presidential vote count was finished at 1 a.m., she said.

"We've had a lot of unhappy people," she said. "Touch screen is so easy."

Even older residents who had used touch-screen during the March primaries complained during the presidential election about the loss of touch-screen voting, Barnett said.

Hench said if San Joaquin County had used touch-screen voting, running out of ballots would not have been an issue. This year, several polling places throughout the county ran out of ballots. Photocopied ballots and sample ballots were used instead.

"That's why we're praying for 2006," she said.

For the county to use touch-screen machines by 2006, each machine will need a printer attached that would not only print a voter's ballot but also give a voter three chances to verify their vote, Dahmen said.

The requirement would force changes in software and hardware, Hench said. And certification will take about nine to 10 months for the federal government and another nine months for the state, she said.

Even then, voters still won't have a printed copy of their votes to take home with them, she said.

"Voters think it's going to be like an ATM and they can keep a printed copy," she said. "But it won't be given to voters."

Just like present-day voting where voters get a stub after voting, Hench said voters will be given a receipt. And those stubs or receipts are nothing more than waste, she said.

In fact, Hench said if voters now don't take home their stubs, each polling place would have to dump them after the vote.