Thompson raises concerns about purchase of new voting machines

EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS   Associated Press   01 July 2005

JACKSON, Miss. - U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson is criticizing plans to buy thousands of new electronic voting machines in Mississippi in the next few months, saying he fears the equipment could be unreliable.

Thompson, D-Miss., said Friday that based on conversations his staff has had with the secretary of state's staff, he thinks the touch-screen machines won't have a detailed paper record of the votes cast on them.

"I think the public and the voters deserve a system at the end of the day that has backup, and this system has no backup," Thompson said in an interview.

But David Blount, the spokesman for Secretary of State Eric Clark, said Friday that the machines can make paper printouts of the votes each candidate receives.

What won't be available - at least not immediately - are paper printouts that individual voters can use to verify that the machines register their ions properly.

Clark has said he hopes printers can be purchased later for each voting machine to provide that information.

In a written statement Friday, Democrat Clark said he agrees with Thompson about the need for accurate elections.

"That is why we are buying these touch-screen machines," Clark said. "The evidence is overwhelming that they are the most accurate and secure voting machines made anywhere."

The federal Help America Vote Act of 2002, or HAVA, requires all states to replace outdated voting machines by next January. In Mississippi, only six counties have machines that meet HAVA standards - DeSoto, Hinds, Jackson, Lowndes, Noxubee and Rankin. That leaves 76 counties needing to replace their lever machines, scanners and other outdated equipment.

Clark announced earlier this week that he and the director of the state Department of Information Technology Services signed a contract this week with Diebold Election Systems Inc. for a mass purchase of electronic touch-screen machines.

Diebold won the contract after a lengthy committee process that included hands-on testing of machines from several companies. Clark said Diebold also offered the lowest bid.

Counties can either take part in the mass purchase of machines or can find their own vendors. Clark said it would be cheaper for counties to take part in the mass purchase.

The federal government is paying 95 percent and the state is paying 5 percent of the $15 million tab to buy new machines in Mississippi and to provide training and technical support.

The cost covers 5,164 machines - enough to have one machine for about every 190 voters in the state.

Several members of the Legislative Black Caucus met with Clark on Thursday to raise concerns about new machines.

Rep. Willie Bailey, D-Greenville, said Friday that he worries some voters will have trouble adjusting to new equipment, particularly older voters or those who have little experience using bank machines or computers.

"With the history of Mississippi, with the problems we've had with voting, we need a paper trail" from the new machines, Bailey said.

Rep. George Flaggs, D-Vicksburg, who's also in the Black Caucus, said he's confident voters can learn to use the machines. The key, he said, is to make the machines available in malls, churches and other public places months before elections so people can get used to them.

"I have absolutely no fear of electronic voting," Flaggs said. "It's the wave of the future."

HAVA spells out several changes states must make in hopes of eliminating some of the election snafus that plagued Florida in the tight 2000 presidential election.