Panel views ballot types
Officials are studying changes to improve state's voting system

By David Ingram
Winston-Salem JOURNAL    14 December 2004

Quite a few Novembers have passed since a voter could mark a paper ballot with a few simple strikes and, after slipping the ballot into a box, expect to have election officials count it by hand.

As technology has advanced, voters have pulled levers, punched cards, connected arrows and touched computer screens. The transition hasn't been easy - in fact, three North Carolina counties still use hand-marked, hand-counted ballots - and the loss of 4,438 votes in Carteret County last month is the most recent evidence that the transition is continuing.

A committee of legislators, election officials and experts began a series of meetings yesterday to explore changes to North Carolina's elections system.

"We have entered the electronic age," said state Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, D-Orange, a co-chairwoman of the committee.

"Many changes have brought into question whether we have the best system, so that citizens have faith in the system and that all votes are counted."

The legislature established the committee last summer along with many other study committees. The committees are an annual ritual, and their findings aren't necessarily a strong indicator of future legislative action.

But the lost votes in Carteret County meant that election officials couldn't certify a winner in this fall's closest statewide race - for commissioner of agriculture - because the margin there was only 2,287 votes.

Officials have scheduled a special election next month for the 4,438 people whose votes were lost and anyone else in Carteret County who didn't vote in the initial election. The legality of the special election is being challenged in court; a new statewide election would cost at least $3 million.

In any case, members of the elections study committee said they don't want any similar errors in the future.

"In other circumstances, it could have been the governor or it could have been the president," said state Sen. Austin Allran, R-Catawba, a co-chairman of the committee. "That is enough to tell us that we have a problem."

The committee is expected to consider stricter standards for which machines counties can buy or, less likely, a standardized voting system for the entire state. Five voting systems are used across the state, though two of those systems - lever machines and punch-card machines - are already scheduled to be phased out by the 2006 election.

One standard that hasn't been decided, for example, is whether an electronic voting machine should produce a paper record and, if so, what form that record should take. Officials want to know that the paper record accurately reflects the voter's intention, how the machine recorded the votes and how the votes would be counted.

The committee could also examine changes to state law. Some officials want the State Board of Elections to have more authority to certify voting machines, and others want the board to have more direct control over local elections boards.

The committee's next scheduled meeting is Dec. 20. It is expected to release a report early next year.