CHARLIE MITCHELL: Touch-screen voting a hard sell in Mississippi

8/16/2005   Opinion
Daily Journal

In two years, perhaps less, the vast majority of Mississippians will wonder what all the fuss was about, says Secretary of State Eric Clark.

The issue is voting machines, specifically whether boards of supervisors should accept the Diebold-brand touch-screen machines the state has agreed to provide at no cost to Mississippi's 82 counties to bring them into compliance with federal law.

To Clark, a Democrat, a former member of the House and a person with long family ties to Mississippi elections, the reluctance some local officials and organizations, including the state NAACP, have shown about making the change is something of a mystery.

Touch-screen machines are easy to operate, are already in operation in two Mississippi counties (Hinds and Rankin) in many other states, including Georgia. Perhaps best of all, they are being bought with federal funds requiring only a 5 percent state match, which the Legislature approved. Still, there's been a lot of niddling.

Tuesday afternoon 51 counties had opted in to accept the machines, Hinds County has opted out, meaning a decision still loomed for 30.

"There seems to be a sense among those who object that an absolutely perfect voting method exists," Clark told members of the state's press last week. "If there is such a system, no one knows about it."

Clark said the ion of Diebold (another division makes ATMs) was performed by a task force that scored presentations made by 10 vendors.

On the final ballot, the company scored well ahead of all competitors.

"Then we opened the bids," he said, "and Diebold's price beat the others, too, and by a substantial margin."

Specifically, the NAACP and some county supervisors say they fear any change will intimidate voters, especially older voters, from casting ballots on "computers" because everyone's heard about breakdowns, data losses and such.

Clark and his staff said there are ample safeguards - battery backups, dual recording systems and such - in the Diebold machines. An internal record of each ballot is made and each can be printed out. Too, Clark said last week, plans have been amended and voters will see their ions printed on a scroll of paper that will be retained by the machines.

And, he said, the machines actually enfranchise more people because, statistically, the disabled vote less and each touch-screen machine includes headphones that, for example, empower the blind to vote unassisted.

"Think about that," he said. "People who before have never had the privilege of casting a secret ballot will be able to do so."

Truth be told, that will happen anyway.

Under the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002, Congress has provided $4 billion to states, but has also said every precinct, by Jan. 1, 2006, must not only be accessible to the handicapped, but must have at least one voting machine in each polling place tailored to their needs. Only touch-screen machines do that.

In dollars and cents, the state has $22 million under the first two years of HAVA funding.

The state has a contract to buy up to 5,165 Diebold machines, with printers, for $3,112.50 each, with the price including hardware, software, printers, training and a five-year service plan. Counties opting in will get one machine per average of 190 voters casting ballots in the last several elections. That's far more generous than the national standard of one machine per 250 voters, but counties that want to buy more than their allocation can do so at the state price for two years.

Counties that opt out still face the challenge of meeting the federal criteria by obtaining HAVA-approved machines - and can get state money to do so. But there's a kicker. The state's price per machine rises if fewer are bought and, Clark said, that will leave less and less in the pool of cash to be disbursed to counties that opt to go it on their own.

Clark said he knows change isn't easy, but noted Mississippi was moving toward cleaner roles and more trustworthy elections before HAVA was passed. And there's another cause of the reluctance, too.

"A whole lot of fear," he said, "is being raised by vendors who did not get the contract."

But, again, he's confident, citing 97 percent approval by Georgia voters who have used the touch-screen machines in two elections and seen spoiled and uncounted ballots from 4 percent to almost zero.

"Folks are going to love these," he said.