Jersey County voters to use punch card ballots for last time

By LAURA PRANAITIS

The Telegraph    04 April 2005

JERSEYVILLE Tuesday?s election will mark the last time Jersey County voters pick up a stylus and punch out a piece of cardstock to cast their ballots.

Jersey County Clerk Linda Crotchett said that after the consolidated election, the county?s punch card ballots and vote recorders officially will be retired and replaced with more high-tech, up-to-date optical scan machines.

"It is the end of an era," she said. "It?s going to be a little bittersweet after this election is over, because we?ll be saying goodbye to a voting method we have used for many years, but we?ll be moving into a change that we all hope and think will be for the better."

The county is making the change to comply with the 2002 Help America Vote Act, which was Congress? answer to the 2000 voting debacle in Florida, when election judges studied punch card ballots with magnifying glasses to find "hanging" or "pregnant" chads.

Crotchett said although she and her staff are ready for the switch to a new voting system, it is frustrating that every county in every state using punch card ballots is required to change their machines because of problems in just one state.

"When I first learned that we had to do this, my first thought was, ?Why spend all this money on new machines when ours still work just fine?? But the integrity of the punch card system was challenged in the 2000 election, and the most important job of any election authority is to ensure that every voter?s ballot is counted and counted fairly," she said.

Jersey County first started using the punch card system in April 1981 after using paper ballots for many years, on which voters simply marked an "X" in front of their preferred candidates? names. The paper ballots then were counted by hand. Crotchett said that when the punch card system was introduced, many of the county?s voters were a little apprehensive about the new machines.

"There was a lot of skepticism about it," she said. "A lot of people wanted to know how these machines were going to count their votes when all that was on the ballots were holes."

It didn?t take long for the non-believers to be converted and have confidence that this new-fangled way of counting votes could actually work. In the 24 years that Jersey County has used punch card ballots, there have only been five times when recounts had to be conducted, Crotchett said. She noted that those five recounts only were needed because the vote counts in particular races were very close and the candidates requested the recounts.

"We?ve never had a problem with our punch card machines," she said. "When we first purchased them, we spent $26,000 for 115 punch card recorders and 30 demonstrators, and we?ve only had to replace a few machines over the years.

"I?d say we got our money?s worth out of this system," she said.

Although it will be difficult to make the transition from punch card machines to optical scan, Crotchett said she is confident the county?s voters will be successful in the switch.

The county already has purchased 27 optical scan voting machines, which will be used for the first time in the April 2006 primary election. The machines and the software required to operate them cost a total of $172,000; federal grant money paid for $79,800, while the county was responsible for the remaining $92,200.

Crotchett said the county still must purchase 27 "auto mark" machines, which will be made available for voters who are disabled, blind or illiterate. The machines allow voters to listen through headphones to audio instructions for casting their ballots, and after they indicate their choices, the auto mark machines will mark the ballots for them.

Overall, the new system is designed to ensure that ballots are cast correctly and that every vote is counted in every election. Voters no longer will be required to punch out small paper holes, and election judges no longer will have to keep track of thousands upon thousands of punch cards, then feed them into a counting machine. The counting will be done as soon as each voter casts his or her ballot.

With the optical scan machines, the voters will fill in ovals next to a candidate?s name with a pen. After they have made all their choices, the voters their paper ballot into the machine, which records the votes on each ballot. The votes then are digitally stored on a memory card in the machine.

At the end of election night, the total results are easily tallied by gathering the recorded information from each machine?s memory card. The paper ballots are kept as back-up records of the votes; however, if the machine has worked correctly, the paper ballots will not be needed.

"It?s designed to be more voter-friendly and make it almost impossible to spoil a ballot," Crotchett said.

While the change to the optical scan machines is imminent, it is not immediate. Crotchett said she has heard from several concerned citizens worried that the new machines will be put to use Tuesday; however, that is not the case.

"We?re not changing over just yet. We still have one more election, this election coming up, to use the punch cards," she said. "I want everyone to know that they don?t have to worry. There will be nothing different when they go to the polls on Tuesday. It will be the last time to feel the joy and excitement of punching a ballot to vote for your candidates."