Election went fairly well, but touch-screen needed

BY TOM HATFIELD, Special to The Hilton Head Island Packet
Published Sunday, November 14th, 2004

As presidential elections go, 2004 went reasonably well. Congratulations to our 500-plus poll workers who did an outstanding job.

But in addition, God bless the voters who either came prepared to vote or did not enter the voting booth until they had a fairly good idea. Especially on the 1 percent sales tax referendum. To those of you who remember the very long lines of voters trying to decipher 13 confusing referenda in 1996, be assured that fear is a great motivator.

We know that some poll workers made some mistakes. Hopefully, none were serious and prevented a voter from voting. From experience, we know that people will tell us of those mistakes, and we will continue to attempt to prevent them.

Poll workers (average age 72) work a 13-hour day and average one election a year. We spend at least two hours before each election briefing them on the do's and don'ts as well as a recertification class every three years. Yet, humans do make some mistakes. We try not to, but some are inevitable.

Our Accu-Vote equipment performed well, with only five or six out of 90 needing technical attention. Probably the biggest complaint were ballots being rejected by the Accu-Vote for undervoting (i.e., not voting for all of the candidates or issues). Under the new federal Help America Vote Act, alerting a voter that they have undervoted is now a federal requirement.

Since the 1 percent sales tax referendum failed by less than 1 percent, state law required that the entire race be recounted (more than 53,000 ballots). Since we had to recount all of the ballots and the fail-safe and challenged ballots would not be determined until Friday (to check their validity), the recount could not be started until Nov. 8.

The 80 precinct "smart cards" had to be reprogrammed, and department staff had to sift through 106,000 ballots to find the 53,000 ballots for the referendum. This took most of the weekend.

If anyone questions the reliability of electronic voting, here is a perfect case in point as to why it is reliable. Twenty-four machines recounted 53,000-plus ballots and did so within four votes, a minuscule error rate.

And, by the way, the 30 volunteers who helped deserve our thanks and admiration. They worked almost constantly for six hours to complete the task.

So where do we go from here? Next year, the Beaufort County Board of Elections and Voter Registration will decide whether to accept the federal government's generous offer of free new touch screen voting machines about 320 of them (worth $1 million) for Beaufort County.

From what we have read about this election, throughout the United States, the new machines worked very well with few hitches. More importantly, voters were delighted with them. They were easy to use. It is easy to find and correct mistakes. If you overvoted or undervoted, the touch screen machine alerted you to that fact and specified which race or issue. Very little was left to chance.

From our perspective, touch screen machines eliminate the need for paper ballots. This year the cost of 120,000 ballots for 80 precincts and 50 ballot styles was close to $60,000 with two rooms almost filled to the ceiling. (Or, "Now let's see, where is that box of Mossy Oaks 1A ballots?")

To those worried about the lack of a paper trail, we should, in the next few months, be able to put those fears to rest. Voting machines are not computers, although they share some of the same components. They are electronic devices like the hundreds of others that we live with and trust every day that rarely, if ever, electronically fail (i.e., airplanes, automobiles, televisions, radios, CD players, stoves, fax machines, the list goes on and on).

It is now being proven that electronic voting machines are far more reliable than any other method. They are more accurate and give faster results.

On behalf of all of the members of the Beaufort County Board of Elections and Voter Registration and our office staff, thanks to all of you for your help, kindness and patience.