County election board opts for paper trail
New machines would need commissioners' approval

BY MATTHEW VAN DUSEN    Northwest Indiana Times   11 May 2005

Porter County election officials ed on Tuesday $1.5 million worth of new voting machines and equipment that will replace the obsolete punch-card ballots but still provide a paper trail to protect against election tampering and computer error.

The County Election Board must have a contract for equipment that meets federal Help America Vote Act guidelines before July 1, or the state will choose it for them. County Clerk Dale Brewer can spend $1.05 million of state and federal money and must ask the county to cover the rest.

The three-member board, comprised of Republicans Patrick Lyp and Brewer and Democrat JJ Stankiewicz, chose Omaha, Neb.-based Election Systems & Software's optical scan tabulators, a machine that uses paper ballots and counts votes on computer packs and ticker-tape printouts.

Voters choose candidates by filling in bubbles on SAT-like forms, then feed the ballot into the machine. If a ballot has an error, such as two votes for one race, the optical scan machine will spit it out so the voter can fix mistakes on the spot.

Voting technology watchdog Will Doherty, executive director of the pro-paper ballot, California-based organization Verified Voting, says optical scan machines are the best technology out there.

"Our organization feels that's is a good choice because not only does that make the paper ballot the ballot of record, it also affords the voter the opportunity to correct any obvious problems with the ballot," Doherty said.

Doherty is against electronic voting machines because they can be tampered with.

The board voted to draw up a contract for 140 M100 Optical Scan Tabulators for 125 precincts, voting software and 100 voting booths. Federal law also requires the county to provide a voting machine for people with disabilities at each of the 96 polling sites (some sites have two precincts), so officials are looking into 125 units.

Brewer wants to get the new AutoMARK system that would mark a disabled voter's choices on the same ballot other voters are using, unlike other machines that are all electronic. But the AutoMARK, which has a voice-read ballot, has not been approved by the state yet, so officials will not know if they can purchase it until the end of May or June.

The county must also face the problems of storage and delivery of the machines, said ES&S Sales Manager Robb McGinnis.

The old punch card voting machines are light and take up a room in the basement of the county administration building, but the new machines are roughly the size of a small photocopier and require climate-controlled rooms.

The size of the machines also makes them difficult to transport.

The election board will meet once more to vote on a contract and then will seek approval from the county commissioners.