County looks at new voting machines
By Connie Street of the Muscatine Journal  18 January 2005

MUSCATINE, Iowa - Muscatine County officials got their first look at new voting machines on Monday, when Omaha-based Election Systems & Software presented a voting equipment demonstration in the third-floor courtroom.

New voting machines must be in place by 2006, according to the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA). HAVA requires a minimum of one voting machine that is handicapped accessible in each precinct. The machine the county would most likely choose for that purpose is the Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machine, more commonly known as the touch-screen voting machine.

Although only one DRE machine must be placed in each precinct, all the 10-year-old voting machines in Muscatine County's 27 precincts, nearly 100 of them in all, must also be replaced because their manufacturers will not recertify the old machines.

Another type of voting machine is the optical scan machine. With that type of machine, voters fill in a circle next to a candidate's name on a paper ballot, then feed their ballots into a scanner. If they have mismarked their ballots or voted for too many candidates, the scanner then kicks out the ballot and the voter knows that a mistake has been made and can try again with a fresh ballot.

"The state hasn't certified any new machines," County auditor Leslie Soule told the Board of Supervisors Monday. "We can't buy anything until they do."

Soule said she budgeted $350,000 for new machines, but can only estimate the costs. There is some federal money available, but the amount each county will receive has not been determined, Soule said. She anticipates issuing bonds to pay for the machines. Though the exact cost of the machines was not available, Soule estimates they could cost between $3,500 and $5,000 a piece.

She said to save costs, she is considering combining some adjoining precincts, but no decisions have been made. New poll sites must be handicapped accessible, and Soule said some townships simply don't have buildings that meet that requirement.

Soule also noted that it could be difficult to combine townships because when there are township elections, election workers must be sure to give voters the correct ballots

Soule said training election workers on the new machines would also be a major task.

Soule hopes to have machines that will tally ballots at each polling site and will leave a "paper trail." She is concerned that if there is a power outage or some other problem during the day, votes would be lost and there would be no way to verify them with the new equipment.

In addition to the cost of voting machines, Soule had to increase her budget for elections for the coming year by about $8,000. She said postage costs for absentee ballots skyrocketed because of a major push for voting absentee and she will need to purchase new voter registration software. She also had to double the number of election workers in 2004 because of the number of absentee and provisional ballots in 2004. Soule doesn't expect 2005 elections to be so dramatic, but still expects higher costs than in past elections.

Soule said she hopes several more companies will come to Muscatine County to demonstrate their voting equipment.