New program could wind up costing local taxpayers
BY ROD Stetzer    Chippewa Herald    July 12, 2005
Kathy Bernier isn't against people voting. Her job as county clerk depends on her winning votes.

But Bernier says local tax-payers will be shortchanged under a federal program designed to allow the blind and the quadriplegic to vote without assistance.

"There's no common sense to this," she said.

The state is buying an accessible voting machine for all 37 voting precincts in Chippewa County. That comes to a total of $165,000.

The machines will come with a headset so blind voters can follow the voice prompts in privacy. Along with the voice prompts, each machine will have a "sip and puff" feature that quadriplegics can use to vote without needing anyone else's help.

Bernier estimates that perhaps five voters in Chippewa County would use the machines during a presidential election, which usually draws the highest percentage of voters.

If five voters would use the machines, it would translate into $33,000 per vote.

Kevin Kennedy, the executive director of the Wisconsin State Elections Board, said the machines can be used by regular voters and those with disabilities. But the voting process will take longer on the new machines than the ones currently used.

Kennedy said the new machines will help more disabled people vote. He adds: "The federal law requires every polling place to have an accessible voting system."

A 2002 law is called the Help America Vote Act, which came about after the disputed Florida vote in 2000.

The state is getting $18 million to buy the machines. Last year, the state Legislature authorized the elections board to make the purchase by Jan. 1, 2006, the deadline set by the federal law.

While it's federal and not local money that's being spent on the machines, Bernier said the money still comes from taxpayers.

"Why have a . . . piece of equipment sitting there and no one will use it?" she asked.

Bernier has no problem with more disabled people being able to vote.

But the ongoing costs are going to be extremely high for such little use, she said.

However, Kennedy said the state still has 900 polling places that use paper ballots. In those cases, people with sight disabilities or quadriplegics can't cast a ballot privately and independently, which the law ensures.

All of Chippewa County's voting precincts use the AccuVote optical scan system from Diebold. Paper ballots are used only in special occasions, such as the Fourth Ward recall election Aug. 2 in Chippewa Falls.

Bernier said Chippewa County residents with sight-impairments or quadriplegics usually have someone assist them in filling out an absentee ballot. Poll workers are also able to assist people with disabilities at polling places.

Bernier said the $18 million the state is getting will also pay for a year's programming and licensing for software. After that, local municipalities pick up those costs.

That's where Bernier said local taxpayers will be hit the hardest. They will have to pay for someone to go into a recording studio and record the names of all of the candidates on the ballot.

"That will be very expensive," she said. "They have to read every single ballot style."

In the years when there are presidential elections, that cost wouldn't be so bad because most ballots across the county will have the same names. But in the spring, when cities, villages, towns and school districts hold local elections, many names are not duplicated on other ballots.

"In the spring, we have 100 different ballot styles," she said. That will drive up the cost.

Bernier questions whether the town of Ruby, for example, will be able to afford having work done for a voting machine that no one in the town will use.

About a third of counties in Wisconsin use the same system as Chippewa County, Kennedy said, while the rest (including Eau Claire County) use systems from another vendor.

Kennedy said so far, only two kinds of machines have been certified by the state as meeting federal standards for use by those with disabilities. But neither is compatible with the system used by Chippewa County. That means county taxpayers could wind up paying programming costs for two sets of machines.

"The fact (is) you're going to have to double programming for those elections, (and) that's the challenge," he said. And that's even though a system produced by Chippewa County's vendor, Diebold, is used in other states.

If the board could get the state legislature to mandate one voting system in Wisconsin it would cut costs, Kennedy said.

The elections board doesn't want to spend $18 million now and know that, two years from now, the money could be spent better, Kennedy said. But he said federal legislators are unwilling to change the Jan. 1, 2006 deadline for the purchase of the machines.

"Could it be done more efficiently? Yes, if they gave us three more years," Kennedy said, adding that's not going to happen.

Bernier would like to see the federal law changed so that the county could have one of the ADA-compliant machines available at a central site for blind or quadriplegic voters.