County shops for new voting machine
J.D. Prose, Times Staff
08/21/2005
 Email to a friend     Printer-friendly 
 

BEAVER - Beaver County officials are expecting to return from a convention in Philadelphia this week with potential replacements for the county's banned Patriot touch-screen voting system.

Advertisement

  
"The thing we need to do is go and look at everything on exhibit and come up with a consensus on what we feel are the best three for Beaver County," Commissioners Chairman Dan Donatella said.

All three commissioners and elections director Dorene Mandity will be traveling to the annual state conference for Pennsylvania county elections directors.

Seventeen vendors offering various types of voting systems will also be attending, and county officials will be paying close attention to their products.

"We've got to make sure that the voters are sure their vote is going to count," said Commissioner Joe Spanik, chairman of the elections board.

Commissioner Charlie Camp called the convention "one-stop shopping" for officials interested in inspecting multiple systems.

Donatella and Mandity said companies will be invited to the Beaver County Courthouse to set up their equipment for a public examination, similar to the one conducted before the county bought the Patriot system in 1997 for $1.2 million.

Residents, Donatella said, will "literally vote for the equipment they like the best." Officials will evaluate those survey results before choosing a system, he said.

Although there will be several companies hawking their wares in Philadelphia, county officials are somewhat limited in their choices. Under the federal Help America Vote Act, each county in the nation must have a system ordered by Jan. 1 that meets both federal and state law.

Under HAVA, Beaver County should receive $1.03 million, or $8,000 for each of its 129 precincts, to buy a new system. County officials have repeatedly said they don't expect that amount to be nearly enough to pay for a new system.

Mandity said that most new touch-screen units cost between $3,000 and $3,800 each. She said the county has 419 touch-screen units and 135 control units, which cost more than the touch-screen units.

So far, however, only one system has been certified by both the state and federal governments, said Brian McDonald, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of State, which oversees the Bureau of Commissions, Elections and Legislation.

AccuPoll complies with federal law and offers a touch-screen system and paper verification. It was tested by the state on Aug. 4 and later certified.

Avante's Vote-Trakker has been denied certification, McDonald said, six companies are awaiting the results of their tests, and one has yet to have a test scheduled. One of the companies waiting on its results is UniLect Corp., maker of the Patriot system that was decertified by the state earlier this year after it failed a retest.

The decertification forced Beaver, Greene and Mercer counties - the only Pennsylvania counties that had the Patriot system - to use paper ballots in the May primary. All three are using paper ballots in the November general election as well.

County officials have said they will probably choose another electronic-voting system because they are more cost-efficient and reliable than paper ballots.

"We definitely want to stick with electronic voting because it's so cost-effective," Camp said.

Jack Gerbel, UniLect's president, said the version tested by the state on Monday differed slightly from the county's system. He said the newer version has 15-inch color screens, compared with the county's 10?-inch black-and-white screens, and d software.

Other equipment, such as control units for machines and information packs holding voting data, is the same. Monday's test, Gerbel said, went "real well."

Michael Shamos, the Carnegie Mellon University computer professor who conducted UniLect's two unsuccessful tests earlier this year, did not handle the company's latest exam.

Instead, Glenn Newkirk of InfoSENTRY Services Inc. in Raleigh, N.C., was retained by the state. According to its Web site, InfoSENTRY is an information technology consulting company.

Gerbel said the county could easily its system if the revised Patriot machines are certified. "They certainly can ( the system)," he said, "They'd save some money, too."

McDonald said he couldn't specifically address Beaver County's situation with the Patriot system, but did say that the county would receive $4,000 per precinct, or $516,000, to an existing system.

Commissioners, though, said it's pointless to speculate because the state and federal governments still must approve any systems that would be made available. "We're at their mercy to some degree," Spanik said.

Camp, who still argues that the Patriot system is reliable, said all electronic-voting systems are similar, and he compared the search for a new one to shopping for laundry detergent.

"It's the same Tide," he said, "just in a different box."