IN OUR VIEW Close your eyes, spend the money

The Daily Herald    03 May 2005

As Utah election officials an electronic voting system for compliance with the Help America Vote Act, Utah County officials are clinging desperately to old-fashioned punch-cards.

The County Commission is searching for a cheaper alternative to the touch-screen machines or optical scanners approved under the act.

 
In a haven of high tech, it seems a little backward. Utah County is a home to networking giant Novell and is former home to WordPerfect. There are a slew of high-tech companies operating in the area. This is a place where people download scriptures and Sunday School manuals onto their personal digital assistants for church classes and think nothing of making purchases from home on their high-speed Internet connections. It's one of the most wired communities in America.

The Help America Vote Act HAVA was enacted after the troubled 2000 presidential election, when punch-card ballot problems in Florida threw the election into prolonged controversy. Multiple recounts were required, along with legal appeals and maneuvers that went all the way to the Supreme Court.

Along with promoting a reliable voting system that can deliver rapid election results, HAVA also requires a voting machine that allows handicapped people to cast ballots without assitance. The machines Utah is considering, from Diebold and Election Systems and Software, allow visually impaired people to vote on their own by providing audio prompts and a telephone keypad to enter choices.

The technology doesn't come cheap. These machines run between $3,000-$5,000 each. County officials say that is too much to outfit all 269 voting precincts. By contrast, a punch-card voting machine consisting of flimsy folding table with privacy panels, a stylus and a holder for the ballot card costs about $100.

"I'm a cheapskate," Utah County Commissioner Jerry D. Grover said about his desire to find a way to avoid buying the electronic machines.

We understand. But there's a fine line between being fiscally conservative and being a drag on progress. On this matter, our commissioners, bless their hearts, are defending buggy whips in an age of high-speed data processing.

Voters want the results fast, and they want them to be accurate the first time around. Remember 1996, when defective cards gummed up the works? Stacks of cards were hauled into the county offices as usual. but bad card stock jammed the counting machines. In Florida in 2000 there were other issues, such as voters who failed to punch out their cards properly. The system was simple, but if it's operated by simpletons (a substantial part of the population), errors will result.

The people who count votes are not only not simpletons, they're not volunteers. They're getting paid by the hour. Those hours could be substantially reduced with the advent of electronic voting machines. You pop in a computer disk and voila! you have your count. Voting machines can also be connected to election central by electronic lines, with encrypted data transmitted to the main computer. This means even the most distant precints can report their results in a timely manner.

For the nervous Nellies, the machines will have a printer that will create a paper trail for recount purposes.

Another cost-saving comes in not printing multiple ballot books for each precinct. The ballot is electronically downloaded into the touch-screen machines. This also makes it easier and cheaper to make last-minute changes to the ballot, such as in Salt Lake County when County Mayor Nancy Workman resigned just before the election but after the ballots had been printed.

Time and labor savings should offset some of the cost of electronic machines. Whether it's enough over time is the question. But that shouldn't stop us from converting. Whatever the cost, electronic machines are simply better for the electoral process, just as bank ATMs have made financial transactions easier and electronic check-in machines at airports have streamlined travel.

Electronics will prevent a repeat of the Florida fiasco, where a confusing ballot caused people to vote for the wrong candidate or to vote for more than one candidate for the same position. It's an easy mistake to make on a punch-card system, and hard to spot before the card is collected.

Electronic machines prevent overvoting by locking out the other candidates once you yours. There's an "undo" button in case you make a mistake. The machines also give you a "speak-now-or-forever-hold-your-peace" option of reviewing your ions before hitting the final submit button on the touch-screen. This prevents voters from casting incorrect ballots as well as eliminating the mistakes that fouled up card-counters in the past.

A wonderful fringe benefit, though not the core reason for a switch, is that disabled voters can have the same level of privacy that able-bodied electors take for granted. In the voting booth, a blind voter doesn't need to have someone there reading the ballot aloud to him or telling him which place to punch. Not only does this voter get a true secret ballot like everyone else but he is assured that his "helper" hasn't steered him away from his preferences.

Sure, the state's going to need to come up with $5 million to cover the difference between the machine's $25 million price tag and the $20 million the federal government is providing under HAVA, but if it means more reliable, more accurate voting, with faster-moving lines at the precincts and with more timely results, then it is money well invested. It might even encourage more voter participation.

Utah County shouldn't be too cheap to embrace a better mousetrap.