Pulaski County forced to buy new voting machines  
 
By Darrell Todd Maurina
 
 
Photo by Darrell Todd Maurina
Steve Nibert, president of the Elkins-Swyers Company from Springfield, demonstrates the operation of handicapped voting machines all counties in Missouri will be required to have by the 2006 federal elections.  
  

 

Upcoming changes in state and federal election laws will force Pulaski County to buy at least 10 new items of vote counting equipment costing at least $5,500 each, but representatives of the Elkins-Swyers Company told commissioners Monday morning the new equipment could dramatically reduce the time needed to count ballots.

"We're all here today because of the 2000 election in Florida," said senior sales representative Steve Byers, who represents the company that currently prints Pulaski County ballots and sold the county its current vote counting machine about 15 years ago.

Byers said Pulaski County is actually ahead of many counties in the state.

"Still to this day, 60 percent of the people who cast ballots in the state of Missouri vote on punchcard ballots," Byers said, referring to the voting system that produced the 2000 presidential election recount in Florida.

Byers said that as a result of the 2000 election, Congress passed the 2002 Help America Vote Act, which he said requires all voting jurisdictions by the 2006 federal elections to have in place a system allowing handicapped voters to cast ballots without needing assistance and purchase machines that read the ballots and give voters a second chance if they have made a mistake on the ballot such as mismarking the ballot or ing two candidates for a single office.

 

Byers said funds should be available to pay for the $3,500 machine needed in each of Pulaski County's ten precincts to help blind, illiterate, or vision-impaired voters cast their ballots, but the county will have to come up with $5,500 for each of the "second chance" machines.

Presiding Commissioner Tony Crismon said he wasn't optimistic about getting money to pay for the handicapped voting machines.

"If it's like the rest of the state money, they won't even pay their damn jail bill," Crismon said.

Company president Steve Nibert said the machines are designed to be easy to use by both poll workers and voters.

"Your average poll worker is 79.3 years old, that's just the way it is," Nibert said. "You don't need to give the poll workers a lot of information, they just have to plug it in and it works."

While expensive, Nibert said the vote-counting machines will make it possible for election officials to know the results of the vote in each precinct immediately after the polls close, and the machine is designed to be virtually impossible to jam up.

"We have folded (ballots), crumpled them, and done who knows what," Nibert said. "This machine will handle some pretty bad ballots."

County Clerk Diana Linnenbringer asked if a lease arrangement or installment plan might be available for the machines.

"(Voting machine manufacturer) Sequoia says we are not in the banking business," Nibert said. "My recommendation is probably in your county, you have a bank you deal with, and they'd probably be willing to make you a good deal in order to keep county business."

"It's getting into the 21st Century and I think we're going to have to do it," said Commissioner Dennis Thornsberry.