New ballot machines to mark mark in 2006

By Don Bowen/Fremont Tribune Staff   17 May 2005
The next time Nebraska voters go to the polls, they will face several changes.

The most obvious change will be a computer system for them to mark ballots rather than marking a piece of paper, said Dodge County Clerk Fred Mytty. Paper still will be involved.

Voters will slide their paper ballots into the front of a new AutoMARK Voter Assist Terminal, which is produced by Election Systems & Software, based in Omaha, according to information provided by the company.

Voters then will see the ballot in large print on a computer screen and mark their choices on the screen. The AutoMARK system then will mark those choices on the ballot before voters place their ballots in a ballot box.

Company information emphasizes that this is not a vote tabulation machine, just a ballot marking system.

Mytty said this system will be at all 32 polling places in Dodge County for the 2006 election season.

 

The new system also has an audio function for voters who are blind or have severely impaired vision, according to the company.

While the system also has multiple language capabilities, Mytty said that likely won't be available in 2006.

Federal law requires that when a minority population that doesn't predominantly speak English reaches 5 percent of the voting-age population then the county must provide for that language. Mytty said the Hispanic voting age population in Dodge County is at 3.9 percent.

The 40-pound systems must be stored in a climate-controlled room, he said. That likely will be in the courthouse. The machines must be taken to each polling place.

The biggest issue for the 2006 election could be making sure someone is available at each polling place who is properly trained on the system to help voters who have questions about it or difficulty using it.

With this system, there's still some uncertainty as to how early voting will work, Mytty said. Each precinct has a different ballot.

"The past few elections, we've been able to print out a ballot on a laser printer when a voter showed up to vote early," he said.

But with the new computer ballot marking system that might not be an option. He said they probably will have to have several copies of each ballot printed before early voting starts.

"That means a lot of leftover ballots that we had to pay for and running out of ballots for some precincts," he said. "There's no way to know exactly how many we would need in each precinct."

Early voting has been allowed by mail or in person in the county clerk's office for years, he said. Until more recently, it was called absentee voting, which required the voter to a reason for not being able to be at the polling place on election day.

A few years ago, the word "absentee" was ped from the voting process, and it became early voting.

The number of voters in Dodge County casting ballots before election day has fluctuated during the past 15 years, according to information released by the county clerk's office.

During the 1992 General Election, 1,065 people voted early, but the number of early voters fell in 1996 to 866. The number of early voters increased to 1,723 in 2000 and 1,932 in 2004.

The number of early voters is smaller during gubernatorial elections, according to the information. There were 745 early voters in 1990, 566 early voters in 1994, 441 in 1998 and 617 in 2002.

This year, the Nebraska Legislature has taken it another step to allow the election to go to where voters are likely to be, such as malls, supermarkets and college campuses.

But that will not be available in Dodge County in 2006, according to Neal Erickson, Nebraska Deputy Director for Elections. He is talking with Lancaster County officials to try it there as a pilot project next year.

"We have technical considerations, and we have political considerations," Erickson said. "We have to make sure the technical considerations are taken care of first. We will start on a very small scale. We will find out the limitations. We have to see if sites are available. Will they have the wiring for this system? It may turn out we have trouble finding places to handle it.

"We'll see what works and learn from that before trying on a larger scale," he continued. "We may find it doesn't work at all or that people don't want it."

Several other changes are being made in an attempt to attract more voters to the polls, Mytty said.

One change takes place the first week of June when the voter registration list becomes a statewide list rather than being kept within individual counties, said Mytty.

Another change is that felons will be allowed to vote after two years after they have completed their sentence.