New county voting system required by 2006: Supes: 'Sanctity of vote' important in search for replacement system

By James Faulk The Times-Standard   16 March 2005

EUREKA Humboldt County over the next few months will have to decide which new voting system it will choose to fulfill state and federal requirements.

Then county leaders will have to figure out how to pay for storage and associated costs to implement that new system.

The Board of Supervisors heard a report Tuesday from the County Clerk-Recorder Carolyn Crnich and Elections Officer Lindsey McWilliams on the upcoming requirements under both state and federal election law.

The federal Help America Vote Act, signed into law in 2002, requires that every polling place have an accessible voting system. At this point, the most likely options are touch screen voting systems. The act also mandates that every polling place be made accessible to people with disabilities, so improvements will have to be made to many of the county's polling spots.

Under new state guidelines, any touch screen system must have an Accessible Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail.

Federal money has been allocated for the upgrades under the federal law amounting to roughly $195 million for California, but local elections officials told the board Tuesday that they are not sure that will be enough. There is also money under Proposition 41 the Voting Modernization Act amounting to almost $1 million for Humboldt County.

The supervisors at some point will likely have to choose between an entirely touch screen system, or one that features a combination of touch screens and optical scan systems, like Humboldt currently has, to meet the accessibility requirements.

The board on Tuesday directed Crnich and McWilliams to meet with the county counsel and County Administrative Officer Loretta Nickolaus to review a request for proposals to companies who might be able to help the county meet the new requirements.

One of the biggest issues under the new system will be storage. While there may be enough money to change-out the system, there may not be funds to cover additional storage and facility improvement costs. The space already allocated to elections material could not handle an additional voting system, Crnich said.

Jimmy Smith, 1st District supervisor, said that sanctity of the vote is of utmost importance.

"We've managed to really complicate what should've been a simple process," said 5th District Supervisor Jill Geist. "We want to find a system that will reduce variables that can cause an error."

Dave Berman of Eureka said he was concerned about the use of computerized voting machines and that the Help America Vote Act does not require that the county abandon punch cards.

"There were tens of thousands of repeated election irregularities this past November," he said. "You'd be forgiven for not knowing because corporate media has kept the story from being reported."

Greg Allen, Arcata attorney and chairman of the local Green Party, agreed that computerized systems present an opportunity for corruption.

"We need the reliability and low-tech verifiability of low-tech paper ballots," he said.

Crnich said many of those concerns were meant to be addressed by the audit trail required by the state.

McWilliams said that during a recent random review of touch screen performance in counties that use such machines, there was 100 percent accuracy reported.

The issue will come back before the board at its April 5 meeting. Crnich said that she hopes to include Berman, Allen and others in the discussions as they move ahead so that their concerns are addressed.