State reinforces voting machine stand
By Alison Hawkes    Uniontown  Herald-Standard
09/22/2005
  

HARRISBURG - Pennsylvania Secretary of State Pedro Cortes reasserted Wednesday that 24 counties, including Fayette County, must spend millions of dollars to replace their decades-old lever voting machines with electronic ones by the end of the year, even if they'd prefer not to.

Cortes said the determination came out of a U.S. Election Assistance Commission advisory released two weeks ago, which states that lever voting systems "have significant barriers which make compliance [with the federal Help America Vote Act] difficult and unlikely."

The reasons include a lack in ability to produce a paper record for a recount and a failure to meet requirements for the disabled. The EAC advisory was a review of compliance standards set in the 2002 Help America Vote Act, which on its own does not specifically outlaw lever machines.

The advisory was in response to ongoing national debate that's also hit some Pennsylvania counties, including Fayette, about whether tried and true lever machines with years of life left in them, must go. Voting integrity advocates have been fighting to keep levers under the claim that they are harder to tamper with on a larger scale than electronic machines.

But Cortes took the EAC advisory as proof enough that Pennsylvania counties using levers must nevertheless make the trade to electronic systems.

"I cannot speak for the wisdom of who passed the law," he told the House State Government Committee Wednesday. "My job is to implement the law and I went to the source. The EAC spoke on the issue."

Cortes also said that with only one new voting machine - AccuPoll - so far certified for use, "time is against us" in meeting a year-end federal deadline for county purchase and implementation by the May primary election. There are 15 more voting machines under state examination.

Cortes blamed delays on companies for canceling exams and refusing to provide information, as well as the lack of federal certification on some machines. Pennsylvania cannot certify machines for county purchase without federal certification.

"We are still confident - if we're able to certify new systems in the next few weeks and months," he said. "Pennsylvania has taken the position that we'll wait to get as much information as possible before we jump into a system. I cannot afford to do it wrong because if I do it wrong we don't have the time and money to do it again."

That could mean, he admitted, that counties will be left to choose from whatever is certified by the deadline.

"We could be in a real box there, then," said Rep. Florindo Fabrizio, D-Erie.

For many counties the decision is an important one not only because it's the first major transition in voting machines in 50 years, but it's also costly.

With federal dollars short, Fayette County estimates it could spend $1.25 million in local tax dollars on the machines.

Rep. Sean Ramaley, D-Beaver, said he was concerned there'd be enough safeguards built into contracts with vendors to prevent another instance like last November's undercount in Beaver, Greene, and Mercer counties, which led to state decertification of the UniLect Patriot touch-screen machines. The counties are still waiting to hear whether the state will reimburse them for the failed machines.

"I think it's imperative for us to work with the counties to make the contracts iron-clad," Ramaley later said.

Cortes said his department would help counties the right language in contracts to cover failed machines and maintenance work, and is setting up a state procurement process for counties to purchase machines using a contract structure already in place.

"Those contracts could have been drafted a little bit better," Cortes said about the UniLect incident in the three Western counties. "If we learned anything from that experience, it's that you have to pay a great deal of attention to those contracts."

Bucks County's Chief Operating Officer Dave Sanko said he's fully convinced now that his county needs to get rid of its lever machines, even though they still work well.

"I believe the voting machines in Bucks County have been functional," he said. "But we have to comply with the law."

Sanko said he trusts the state and federal certification process, and county officials will choose from however many systems are approved, even if that's just two.

"I don't want to take a machine that doesn't have integrity," he said. "I'm not going to satisfy integrity to give people choices."

But voting integrity advocates who attended the hearing were upset that no lawmaker pressed a question on voter verified paper records, a process built into voting machines that require voters to approve a paper copy of their ballots for the purpose of a recount. Nationwide, 26 other states are requiring such systems from their new machines.

"There's really serious question and we're disappointed we're not seeing leadership to fight for our money and our vote," said Mary Ann Gould, co-chair of the Bucks County Coalition for Voting Integrity.

Gould said she also had questions about how thoroughly state examiners are reviewing the programming behind electronic machines and the financial stability of voting machine companies.