Counties to receive voting funds

North state shares millions to improve balloting process

By Kimberly Bolander, Redding Record Searchlight
June 29, 2005

Secretary of State Bruce McPherson came to Redding Tuesday to tell north state elections officials that the region will receive about $8 million from the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).

Shasta County's share is $1.1 million and will be used to purchase state-required printers for voting machines, County Clerk Cathy Darling said. The printers create and keep a paper trail of receipts to show voters that their votes have been received.  
Both Tehama and Shasta counties already meet HAVA requirements, unlike several other north state counties, including Trinity and Siskiyou.

"We're lucky here in Shasta in that we bought our equipment and learned how to use it a couple years ago," Darling said.

Enacted in 2002, HAVA aims to make voting easier, especially for sight-impaired people and wheelchair users. It requires counties to provide at least one touch-screen voting machine per polling place and to replace punch-card systems, both by Jan. 1.

McPherson announced Tuesday that California's counties will receive a total of $195 million in HAVA funding. That includes $386,407 for Tehama County, $368,246 for Siskiyou County and $117,825 for Trinity County.

In June, the state received $169 million that the Election Assistance Commission of California had withheld for nine months after reports of improper spending by the previous Secretary of State, Kevin Shelley. McPherson took his seat in March and went to Washington to ask for the money.

In Redding on Tuesday, he answered questions from about 25 county clerks and their staff members in the Shasta County registrar's office, downtown in The Mall.

McPherson said he inherited an "office in turmoil" and "we needed to steady the ship." Several county clerks commended him for opening the floodgates of communication in a manner quite unlike his predecessor.

But many also expressed anxiety about purchasing HAVA-required touch-screen voting machines before they know which companies' voting systems will be state certified for elections.

Those certifications are not expected until August or September, but each county must comply with HAVA by Jan. 1, Humboldt County Clerk and Recorder Carolyn Crnich said.

"The fear, I think, of everybody in this room is that the sterling, perfect system is going to be available in 2007," she said. "... it seems very much that we are being pushed into an investment that we are not very sure of."

Likewise, McPherson described the "pressure cooker" deadline, without standards from the Department of Justice, as the "worst nightmare."

However, he did not think that counties would forfeit their awarded amounts if they left the money untouched until they could safely buy a certified voting system.

Later, in an interview with Record Searchlight reporters and editors, McPherson warned that counties could end up footing the bill for the special election unless the Democrat-controlled Assembly, which has been feuding with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, appropriates money for the balloting.

If the Legislature fails to approve the estimated $45 million for the election, it could cost Shasta County an additional $240,000, he said.

McPherson also expressed concerns about the profusion of ballot initiatives in recent years.

He noted that 70 initiatives were in circulation this year for the Nov. 8 special election and that eight have qualified for the ballot.

"It's becoming quite abundant," he said of the number of initiatives.

"So many initiatives have handcuffed what the governor and Legislature can do by limiting discretionary funds," he said, citing Proposition 13 and other initiatives that have mandated a fixed percentage of spending on education or health care.

He urged voters to carefully consider any initiative petition presented to them in a supermarket parking lot.

"My advice to voters is, 'Don't feel like you're stupid.' ... Before you sign that initiative petition, make sure you understand it and agree with it.

"I think we can be more careful. Our democracy deserves more than that."