Task force to push for vote centers

By GARY HARMON?? The Daily Sentinel?? 15 June 2005

A task force will recommend that Mesa County replace Election Day voting at 82 precincts with balloting at 22 voter centers scattered around the Grand Junction metro area and the county?s far-flung communities.

Elections officials and task force members said the recommendation was forthcoming after a four-month study of the idea.

Driving the recommendation, however, are requirements in the federal Help America Vote Act and state legislation awaiting Gov. Bill Owens? signature that voters have access to the same voting methods wherever they cast their ballots.

Providing touch-screen voting to all voters on Election Day in fewer than two dozen vote centers would cost about half of what it would cost to adequately and equally equip 82 precincts, said County Clerk Janice Ward.

Estimates that ?are still kind of raw? suggest that it would cost about $1.8 million to supply necessary equipment in precincts, as opposed to about $850,000 for vote centers, Ward said.

About 25 political activists listened to a presentation in the Mesa County Commission public hearing room in which the task force detailed some of the reasons it recommends the change and answered questions written on index cards by audience members.

If the commission moves on the task force recommendation, it will have to conduct a public hearing.

Vote centers would eliminate one problem that has cropped up ? difficulty that voters have on Election Day finding their precincts.

Under precinct polling, voters must be in the right place to cast ballots.

With vote centers, ?You simply cannot go to the wrong polling place,? said Sheila Reiner, elections director.

Vote centers all would be electronically connected to a central poll book system that would allow elections officials to immediately log in the names of voters, preventing them from moving from center to center to cast multiple ballots.

While the poll book would be connected to the centers, there would be no connections between voting machines, leaving the actual votes in the hands of elections officials, just as they are now, until delivered to a central location for counting.

The legislation also calls for voters to have the ability to scan, but not keep, a paper record of their ballots so that they could spot and report any discrepancies between the paper record and the electronic one.

The touch-screen machines also can more easily accommodate the various ballot styles needed in a geographically large county such as Mesa with several forms of local government. Ballot styles refer to the range of questions that await voters, ranging from questions such as presidential elections in which all voters can cast ballots to issues such as fire or water district questions.

In some cases, a single precinct has had as many as three ballot styles, meaning that some voters could cast ballots on local matters that their across-the-street neighbors wouldn?t because boundary lines ran down the middle of the street.

In the November 2004 election, Mesa County officials administered 107 ballot styles.

After studying several possible threats or dangers of system failure, the task force was ?very confident the county was prepared to deal with any problem that might arise,? said John Redifer, a task force member.

Changing the way residents vote on Election Day won?t affect other methods of voting, said Ralph D?Andrea, another task force member.

?If you?re really worried about it,? D?Andrea said, ?you could vote early or you could vote absentee.?