Schuylkill still using older methods in voting process
County faces changes, technology to comply with federal legislation.

By Joshua Sophy
Special to The Morning Call   17 May 2005

The distinctive hum from a fleet of dot matrix printers was a sign of the election season in Schuylkill County.

The relic of what used to be the norm for home computers remains a mainstay of the county's dated and fading Election Day methods ? along with paper ballots and feverish counting.

Those methods were given the semiannual check Monday by county commissioners and county Elections Director Betty Dries ? even as they talked about the coming technology.

Schuylkill remains among the few Pennsylvania counties that rely entirely on paper ballots. Voters use No. 2 pencils to darken ovals next to their candidate choices in the voting booth.

Their ballots, before entry, are placed in metal sleeves. Voters in the booth remove them, vote, return them to the sleeves and them in a central ballot box at each of the county's 167 polling places.

After polls close at 8 p.m., the votes are taken to the main counting terminal in Saint Clair, where crisp ballot sheets are lined and stacked as they await counting, then are shuffled through five dopic scanners.

The machine counts relatively fast and soon after shuffling the ballots through, the crackle from the printer delivers the results.

Schuylkill officials say the system is spot-on accurate. Dries says since she assumed her position in 1993, no election has been overturned.

But it doesn't comply with federal legislation designed to improve voter access and ballot accuracy.

The Help America Vote Act, born of the hotly contested Florida results in the 2000 presidential election and passed by Congress in 2002, set a January 2006 deadline to modernize voting machines, among other measures.

With Schuylkill's expansive geography, it can take more than 30 minutes ? after 9 p.m. ? for some ballots from border voting precincts to reach Saint Clair.

Candidates, voters and the press have been known to wait until 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. for final results.

The county recently applied for a $1.5 million grant to upgrade its voting system and county Administrator William Reppy says he knows changes are afoot.

The specifics of what Schuylkill must do to comply are not yet known, but because of its more primitive voting method, the cost could be among the highest for counties in the state.

Change, Commissioner Chairman Frank Staudenmeier said, ''is inevitable. But we don't know when.''

Commissioner Mantura Gallagher said the county may need to place a tabulating scanner at each of its precincts to speed the counting. But those counts must still be taken to a central location for tabulation.

Pointing to one of the behemoths as it churned through a stack of ballots Monday, Gallagher said each scanner cost $8,000 to $10,000.

At $10,000 apiece, equipping all voting precincts with similar scanners to the five in Saint Clair would cost the county $1.67 million. Dries suggests a cost of $5 million to $6 million to switch the county to touch-screen voting.

Added to that would be the cost to teach the county's 91,000 registered voters, with many in Schuylkill ? where nearly 48 percent of registered voters are at least 50 years old ? facing the technological divide.

The county also would have to hire certified technicians and pay storage costs for the machines.