Primary 2005: Greene voters to get paper ballots
Touch-screen failed last election

Sunday, May 08, 2005
By Crystal Ola    The Post-Gazette

Regardless of whether the state recertifies its voting machines in time for the May 17 primary, Greene County voters will be marking paper ballots.

After Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro Cortes announced April 7 the decertification of the UniLect Patriot Direct Recording Electronic Voting System, the county's election board had to come up with an alternative to the voting method used there since 1998.

Greene County Commissioners Pam Snyder, Dave Coder and John R. Gardner also serve as the elections board. Officials from Greene, Mercer and Beaver counties met with representatives from the Department of State on April 11 to discuss options.

The decertification was a result of a Feb. 15 examination by Michael Shamos, a computer expert from Carnegie Mellon University. The touch-screen system froze, failed to sense touches multiple times, didn't register nor record some votes and stopped accepting touches.

The State Department concluded the DRE system's failures were responsible for 10,000 votes not being recorded during the November 2004 general election in the three counties that used the UniLect system.

Optical scan and lever voting are the most popular types of voting systems in the state, said Brian McDonald, spokesman for the Department of State.

The state's 24 counties had an undervote average of 1.49 percent in the election, according to a Grove City College study. However, the undervotes were 7.29 percent in Mercer, 5.25 percent in Beaver and 4.5 percent in Greene.

"I had absolute faith in the system and I believe every ballot that was correctly cast was counted," said Frances Pratt, director of Greene County's elections and registrations department.

Two to four touch-screen voting devices have been available at each of the county's 44 precincts in past elections. The county spent about $320,000 to buy the UniLect system.

The State Department re-examined the system April 22 and is expected to announce whether the system will be recertified in time for the primary.

It won't make a difference in Greene County, where the elections board has decided to use paper ballots and an optical-scan system to tabulate votes. Write-in votes will be counted at the polls.

The state will cover reasonable costs associated with switching to paper ballots. The initial estimate to have ballots printed and rent equipment from Election Systems and Software Inc. of Omaha, Neb., as well as other supply and training costs, is $28,900, but Pratt expects the final figure to be higher.

Changing voting systems this close to an election has the staff running about two weeks behind schedule, Pratt said. She wants the county to be able to return to using the machines for the November election.

"I'm hoping the UniLect system will be recertified and we will again be using that system," she said. "I have a confidence in this system and I think most of the voters do."