Officials discuss voting operations
Thursday, January 20, 2005 8:22 AM CST

By GREG BISCHOF
Texarkana Gazette

MOUNT PLEASANT, Texas -The effects of the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election in Florida are still being felt nationwide and will likely make a tangible showing in Bowie County before next January.

The continuing ripple effect caused some Bowie County officials to attend an electronic voting workshop Wednesday conducted by the Texas Secretary of States Office in Mount Pleasant.

The workshop focused on technologically advanced voting systems which will allow physically disabled voters to cast ballots unassisted.

Such unassisted voting systems will need to be installed in the county by Jan. 1, 2006.

Apart from allowing for unassisted voting, E-voting, as it is called, is believed to help minimize some problems posed by the traditional paper ballot voting, as evidenced in Florida four years ago. The Florida problems prompted the eventual passage of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002.

During the workshop, Dan Glotzer, of the Secretary of States Office, spoke to officials from surrounding local counties who gathered at the Mount Pleasant Civic Center. He spoke about applying available federal grant funds to help counties pay for new electronic voting system equipment.

Paul Miles, also with the Secretary of States Office, spoke about the Office's elections result certification process, which will include the E-voting results.

"The goal now will be to get the counties in compliance by having E-voting available to them by Jan. 1, 2006," he said. "If there is money left over, it can be used to address whatever technical problems the counties might run into with this new system."

When asked about the availability of curb-side voting, Miles said E-voting machines will be portable enough to accommodate it.

Miles also said the counties could likely charge a $5 fee to loan E-voting machines to cities and school districts for local elections.

Bowie County Commissioner Carl Teel believes the county will go through a learning curve, both in terms of training voters to use the new equipment as well as obtaining grant funding.

Regarding E-voting, Teel expressed concern about the potential for possible electronic breach of the right of secret ballot.

"E-voting is being looked at as a solution to some problems posed by paper balloting," he said. "But I want to be sure that we can be satisfied that no breach of security occurs in the citizen's right to cast a secret ballot. We must be sure there is no internal mechanism in either the hardware or software that will leak a person's choice of candidate to any follow-up report that can be printed after the election."

After the initial workshop sessions, various E-voting systems vendors presented county officials with the equipment.