Freeholders deny funds for paperless voting machines: Montclair residents help convince board to buy time

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

By PAUL BRUBAKER
of The Montclair Times

A crowd of voters? rights activists that included many Montclair residents was delighted when the Essex County Board of Chosen Freeholders voted down a $7.5 million bond ordinance to buy new digital record electronic (DRE) voting machines.

The freeholders voted 5 to 3, with one absence, to reject the ordinance despite state and federal mandates to convert to the machines by Jan. 1, 2006.

The vote was taken at the Hall of Records in Newark just before midnight on Thursday, June 9, after hours of deliberation and passionate public appeals to the board not to fund the purchase of machines until voter-verification technology could be added to them.

?It?s the first time in my life when I felt that the people have prevailed,? said Montclair resident Trina Paulus, who had previously taken up causes against the county?s refuse incinerator, and its sale to developers of its Hilltop property in Cedar Grove.

?I?m shocked...and very proud of our freeholders. They really stood up and listened to their constituents,? said Katherine Joyce, who leads the local chapter of Democracy for America.

Expressing surprise at the vote, Rebecca Mercuri, an election voting rights consultant from Harvard University?s Radcliffe Institute and a Mercer County resident who testified against the ordinance, noted, ?We never actually won one of these.?

Essex County had been on the verge of entering a contract with Sequoia Voting Systems, an Oakland, Calif.-based company, to purchase 700 units of its Advantage model.

The model is the only full-faced machine, displaying the entire ballot at one viewing, certified by the state, and it is already used in 15 counties.

But the machine lacks the capability to allow voters to verify their ballots by viewing a paper record of their balloting through a window.

The activists said the verification feature is vital, and that the freeholders should not earmark any money for new voting machines until such a model became available.

Critics of the Sequoia Advantage perceive an alternative in a machine made by Avante International Technology, a company based in Princeton Junction, which has the voter verification system. The Avante machine is not certified by the state Attorney General?s office.

Pending legislation sponsored by state Sen. Nia H. Gill, D-34, of Montclair, which would require any DRE machines to have voter verification technology, is expected to become state law by the end of the month, according to Essex County Assistant Administrator and Assemblywoman Sheila Oliver, D-34.

Freeholder Board Vice President Patricia Sebold, who cast one of the three votes in support of the ordinance, said that the ordinance only set aside funds and did not commit the county to purchasing a particular machine.

?Why would you set aside money?when you don?t know what product you?re buying and you don?t know what it?s going to cost?? asked Joan Pransky of Montclair. ?Get behind your legislators who are fighting to make sure there are paper trails.?

?This feels so crazy to me,? Paulus said during the public hearing. ?We?re insisting on the purchase of machines and putting aside money for them with a law coming up that will make them illegal very soon.?

But county election officials insisted it was urgent to pass the ordinance that night.

County Elections Board Clerk Linda Von Nessi said that her office needed time to train 2,500 poll workers on the new machines.

The county?s eligibility for a 75 percent federal reimbursement for the new machines required that the ordinance be passed by Sept. 1.

?We?re really at the edge. We waited a long time. I did that with my eyes open,? said Superintendent of Elections Carmine Casciano.

The federal 2002 Help American Vote Act originally required the county to divest its existing voting machines and convert to the new machines in 2004. Essex County received a waiver to postpone the switch until 2006, Casciano said.

Casciano said that he applied for the two-year extension because he believed Essex County Executive Joseph N. DiVincenzo?s fiscal initiatives would improve the county?s ability to finance the machines.

He also said that he expected better voting machine technology to emerge in the two-year window.

?I?m not at all comfortable?sitting here feeling like a gun is to our heads,? said Freeholder Muriel Shore of Fairfield.

?There is a gun to your head,? Casciano said. ?There?s no negotiation. We must use the new machines in 2006.?

Nevertheless, the freeholders, in a 5-3 vote, rejected the bond ordinance. Freeholder President Johnny Jones was absent.

?I stood on principle. Even though the state had mandated [the purchase of the machines], what they did was put us in a situation where we had no choice,? said Freeholder Albertus Jenkins of Montclair, who voted against the action.

Jenkins said that the ordinance could be reintroduced at the freeholders? July 13 meeting, but he anticipated that another extension could be granted to the county that would allow for state certification of voter-verifiable machines.

?Hopefully, we?ll be able to work with the legislature and the attorney general to at least try to get a waiver,? Jenkins said.

The day after the freeholders? vote, Katherine Joyce both congratulated her group and stated that the freeholders had committed to including public input in a search for an alternative to the Sequoia Advantage.