County votes for eSlate voting system
By: SESHADRI KUMAR, Reporter     The Fort Bend Sun   05/03/2005

 Voters in Fort Bend County are likely to use the eSlate electronic voting machines in March 2006 party primaries.
A 3-2 vote by Fort Bend County Commissioners Court last week paved the way for the election administration to begin negotiations with the eSlate manufacturer HartIntercivics.

The county will explore the option of buying at least one eSlate per each polling station to meet the federal Help America Vote Act or converting the entire voting system to eSlate from the current optical scanning system.
Fort Bend County Election Administrator Steve Raborn says the county may need 750 eSlates for a countywide election and at an average cost of $2,400 a piece, the total system may cost about $2.4 million. It is planned that each polling station will have an average of three machines.
The county now spends about $80,000 for a countywide election and expenditure for conducting an election with eSlates is expected to be between $80,000 and $90,000.
Raborn says he hopes to conclude the negotiations with the manufacturer as quickly as possible so that eSlates could be used in the ensuing November Constitutional Amendments election, but that target date is a little ambitious, he says.
Earlier, in Commissioners Court three citizens spoke against the county's purchase of eSlate and wanted a system that would include paper trial of how a person voted.
Fort Bend County Republi-can Party Chair Eric Thode, who was one of the five members of the county election commission, recommended the eSlate, saying six major counties including neighboring Harris County, are successfully using the system.
In one of the most difficult election result challenges involving former State Rep. Talmadge Heflin and Vo, eSlate stood the rigorous test and came out successfully, Thode said.
County Judge Bob Hebert, a member of county election commission, said the county is not afraid of having paper trail, but it is misleading to believe that paper trail would help in anyway during recounts. Under the state law, the actual ballots in the box cannot be opened. Only the data in the computer is printed out and verified, Hebert said.
Also, the county should not lose the opportunity of using federal funds to the tune of $1.9 million and use local tax dollars in the future, if a conversion is mandated by the state.
Commissioner Andy Meyers voted against the eSlate because his constituents in the Katy area who had used the system in local school board elections complained that the system was too cumbersome and was not user friendly. A touch screen method appeared to be easier than rotating the dial forward and backward as in the eSlate system, he said.
Commissioner Grady Prestage said he was not comfortable with the system and the fact that major counties are buying it does not mean that Fort Bend should follow suit.