Touch-screen voting machines to get retest
 By Brandon Keat
Pittsburgh TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, April 16, 2005

Voters in Beaver, Greene and Mercer counties might be able to use touch-screen machines in next month's primary after all.

Pennsylvania Department of State spokesman Brian McDonald said Friday that the UniLect Patriot voting machines used in the three counties will be retested, likely on Friday. If the machines pass, they could be used in the three counties, which have been scrambling to get alternate systems in place by May 17. The state decertified the machines April 7 after officials said they failed accuracy tests performed Feb. 15.

"UniLect has voiced an opinion that they have utmost confidence that they would be able to address the problems that we found and that they would be able to fix them within a matter of days," McDonald said. "If they can prove that, then the counties are certainly able to use the systems for the May 17 election."

While awaiting results of the next test, the counties have little choice but to proceed with plans to use replacement, optical-scan voting systems, said Greene County Commissioner Pam Snyder and Beaver County Commissioner Joe Spanik. Those systems use paper ballots in which voters fill in ovals next to their choices, much like a school test.

Spanik said switching to optiscan ballots would cost Beaver County $80,000 to $90,000. The state has offered to cover the extra cost.

Buying new electronic voting machines for future elections would cost $2 million to $3 million for Beaver County, Spanik said. He said the state offered to pay $8,000 per precinct toward a switch, but that would cover no more than half the cost.

Snyder said the state's decision to retest the machines left her feeling "like a hamster in a wheel."

"Why didn't they just do that in the first place?" Snyder said. "They sure could have saved us a lot of time and aggravation. For the last week, we've been consumed with this issue."

In the February test, the machine froze and sometimes miscounted votes. A separate study found the "undercount" in the presidential race the difference between the number of voters who cast ballots and the total votes counted was higher in counties with UniLect machines than in other counties. Officials said no election results were affected.

Unilect Corp. President Jack Gerbel personally appealed to state officials to reconsider the decertification and defended the Patriot system as accurate. The state consultant who recommended decertification was "confused" about aspects of the system and called for changes that had not been suggested before, he said.

"We just are anxious to take care of whatever shortcomings there are," Gerbel said.

Snyder said she is not sure what Greene County will do if the machines are recertified, because their reliability has been called into question.

"We thought they were reliable to begin with. We never had a complaint or a problem," she said. "We've got to make sure that the voters feel confident."

Thomas J. Rookey, director of Mercer County's Registration and Election Bureau, said his office plans to use optical scanners and that he was "sort of mystified" that he learned about the latest developments from reporters instead of the State Department.