Warren edges closer to electronic voting
Freeholders vote to fund purchases but have not decided on type of machines.
Thursday, July 14, 2005
By SARA LEITCH
The Express-Times

WHITE TWP. Freeholders took their first step toward electronic voting in Warren County on Wednesday with a vote to allocate $1.725 million to buy and support electronic voting machines.

The money is included in the county budget and would not require a bond, freeholders were quick to point out.

"I didn't want to borrow money for something like this," Freeholder John DiMaio said. 
 Freeholders voted Wednesday to authorize an ordinance allocating the funds; it will be up for a second reading and public comment at their July 27 meeting. The state will reimburse 75 percent of the cost of the new machines, freeholders said.

In May, members of the county election board invited representatives of Princeton-based Avante, which produces touch-screen voting machines that are so new they hadn't been certified by state or federal elections commissions. The county is required to have new machines in place for the 2006 election.

Avante's machines cost $6,000 each; the county would have to pay $1,500 each for 200 machines, as well as $50,000 to store them in a climate-controlled warehouse and to hire movers to deliver the 225-pound units for elections.

Freeholders said Wednesday they hadn't decided what kind of machines to buy.

"The board has not come to a conclusion on the style of machine," Freeholder Everett Chamberlain said.

Chamberlain's son, Chad, was another subject of discussion at Wednesday's meeting. Chad Chamberlain receives a small stipend for his work as a member of the board that runs the Warren County Municipal Utilities Authority. He was appointed to the board before his father was elected freeholder.

A resolution re-appointing Chad Chamberlain to the board, with a term to expire Feb. 1, 2010, was on the agenda for Wednesday's meeting, but Freeholder Director Richard Gardner did not put it to a vote.

"We might have a couple of questions in executive session," Gardner said after the public portion of the meeting.

At a December freeholder meeting, DiMaio questioned whether Everett Chamberlain and Gardner, who hired Chad Chamberlain as his campaign director, were violating the state's Open Public Meetings Act by communicating about county business through Chad Chamberlain outside of public meetings.

Because the board has three members, no two freeholders are allowed to discuss county business outside public meetings because the discussion would constitute a quorum the minimum number of members needed to hold a meeting and would therefore violate the so-called Sunshine Law.

Chad Chamberlain has performed well as a member of the utilities authority board, Gardner said Wednesday.

"If he wasn't a good member I wouldn't support him," Gardner said. "I don't believe in just naming members to boards just to be on them. They have to go."

DiMaio agreed that Chad Chamberlain was doing his job as a member of the sewer board.