Carteret County to use paper ballots in next election

The Associated Press    11 August 2005

Carteret County, where more than 4,400 votes were lost in last fall's elections because of a programming error, will return to paper ballots for this fall's elections, the local elections board decided.

Paper ballots will be used Oct. 11 in the Atlantic Beach municipal election and again Nov. 8 in other municipal races and the school bond referendum vote, the board decided Wednesday.

The county's UniLect Patriot voting system had problems in the November 2004 elections, when a programming error that limited the machines' memory storage resulted in the loss of 4,438 ballots. The machines did not record the votes on paper as a backup.

Board member Harry Rivers said he's concerned about continuing to use the machines. But timing is also an issue with the elections just months away, he said.

"I don't feel good about the machines, but we have to move forward to prepare ballots," he said.

Board chairman Bill Henderson of Newport, who was sworn in Wednesday, said the paper ballots would help restore voter confidence.

But board member Sue Verdon, the one Republican on the board, reiterated her desire to use the machines this election. "I would have liked to use the machines in 2005 and then, hopefully, the state will have its guidelines so we can go from there," she said.

The lost votes prompted the General Assembly to study problems associated with electronic voting machines. A bill that cleared the House election laws committee Wednesday would allow only three types of voting methods in North Carolina, beginning with next year's election.

The choices would be limited to optical scan ballot machines, electronic recording machines or paper ballots counted by hand. Any electronic machine would have to provide a paper copy of a voter's ballot, which could be corrected by the voter before they are recorded.

An amendment approved Wednesday sets a formula to determine how much federal and state grant money each county would receive to purchase or upgrade voting machines.

The bill, which already has passed the Senate, now goes to the House Appropriations Committee for consideration.

While the electronic machines won't be used in the upcoming election, a county request to the State Board of Elections about testing the machines still stands.

County Manager John Langdon said a test would allow the county to determine whether the machines work as they should in case they are sold as surplus. Proof that the machines work would likely make it easier for the county to sell them.

"Even if they are not used again, we'd like to establish liability so we can get a higher resale value," Langdon said.

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