Monroe County: New voting machines on the way

By LARRY P. VELLEQUETTE
Toledo BLADE STAFF WRITER   23 December 2004

MONROE - It' not just a handful of longtime local elected officials who made their electoral exits in last month's general election. Monroe County's aging voting machines took their last bow before the voters as well.

As early as next month, County Clerk Geri Allen expects to take delivery of hundreds of new Diebold Accu-Vote ES2000 Optical Scan Voting machines.

Voters might not notice much of a difference on Election Day - the new machines operate in largely the same fashion as the county's current optical scanner system. But on Election Night, it should make it a whole lot easier to compile and report results.

"The technology is going to be state-of-the-art; it's just going to be wonderful," elections clerk Laura Senters said. "It's going to be much better."

The new voting machines are being paid for with federal money approved by Congress under the Help America Vote Act, as well as money from the state. Michigan will receive more than $80 million in federal dollars to convert all 5,305 precincts statewide to an optical scanning voting system.

"It's not going to cost the county anything," Ms. Allen said.

The Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, was signed into law in October 2002. The federal funding will allow Michigan - as well as every other state - to replace outdated voting equipment, and will also help improve access for voters with disabilities and those who are living outside the country.

Michigan's conversion to a uniform method of voting is being done in phases. The first phase, conducted this year, targeted those municipalities that did not have unified voting systems or still had the most antiquated voting methods, such as mechanical machines or paper balloting.

Monroe County is to be included in the state's second phase, state officials said. Each county was presented a choice between two vendors approved to sell the optical scanning systems, and Monroe County's municipal and county clerks voted unanimously to get the Diebold system, Mrs. Allen said.

William Barrett, vice president of sales and marketing for the Fidlar Election Co., a Michigan corporation with an office in Kalamazoo, said Monroe County was ahead of the curve because it already had an optical scan system, but that the equipment it was using was out-of-date. Still, he said, voters likely won't notice much of a change come election time.

"The average voter isn't going to notice a difference at all, unless they tried to use a Crayon in the past and it didn't count their vote, and now it will," Mr. Barrett explained. Ballots under the county's current system had to be marked in a specific way or they were rejected. The new system is far more lenient in allowing different methods for marking ballots.

"We've d the technology inside the machines. Monroe's going to be getting the latest and most tested technology available from Diebold."

That new technology should allow county elections workers to being reporting election results rather quickly after polls close.

Although local municipalities are able to electronically transmit their precinct results under the county's current system, they have run into one problem or another doing so in almost every election for the last five years. Oftentimes, that has meant clerks have had to drive their vote tallies to Monroe before they are tabulated on county issues.

Mrs. Senters said local elections officials should begin their training sometime before February, and that the county's new machines may see their first use in February during a planned local referendum election on a zoning issue. After that, they'll see their first countywide use in next May's school election.

"It's going to be nice to have something totally upgraded," Mrs. Senters said. "It's going to be nice to be with the times."