Officials rework bid process for La. voting machine contract
The Associated Press      07 July 2005 

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) ? State officials are scrapping the first bid process for a $47 million voting machine contract, issuing another, more detailed request for bids and asking companies to submit new proposals ? causing at least a month of delays.

 
Commissioner of Elections Angie LaPlace said Thursday the five companies that submitted bids to the initial request didn't provide all the information that the state wanted, which made it difficult for the nine-member evaluating committee to fairly assess the companies against each other and award the contract.

LaPlace said the new request for bids will be more specific and hopefully clearer to the companies seeking the voting machine contract, so the evaluating committee can get the information it wants on areas like the companies' financial backgrounds, lawsuit history and pricing proposal.

"We'd rather get it right, than be quick about a decision," said LaPlace, head of the evaluating committee.

For example, she said the committee didn't get all the financial documents it asked for from some of the companies, and one company said the bid request wasn't clear on what the state wanted when it asked for the companies' litigation history.

Elections officials hoped to get a contract for the voting machines awarded in mid-July, but that's been pushed back to the end of August ? with the machines to be brought in over as long as six months beginning in October, according to LaPlace.

Louisiana is getting about $47 million from a federal voting act to replace outdated, old lever-style machines and possibly help standardize voting equipment statewide. LaPlace said at least 5,000 machines, or half of all the machines statewide, must be replaced by the fall 2006 elections to meet federal standards.