County election officials hear about equipment options

By PAMELA BRUST    Parkersburgh Sentinel   04 October2005

PARKERSBURG - Officials with Election Systems & Software answered questions and demonstrated Help America Vote Act-compliant election equipment Monday in an effort to assist local county officials in making a final decision by the Oct. 15 deadline.
Federal regulations require HAVA compliance by the 2006 election. The Secretary of State's office has set up four regional meetings for county election officials to see the various options available and get questions answered. About 50 officials gathered for Monday's meeting in Parkersburg.

"All the counties all over the country are facing these same issues," said Gary Greenhalgh, with the ES&S Project Management Team. "The good news in West Virginia is we have the time to do this and a direction to go. We have set up regional managers who will live in West Virginia and will work on a day-to-day basis with the local officials."

Greenhalgh said one requirement where there is no compromise is that visually impaired voters must be able to vote in privacy. Using HAVA federal funds, the state has agreed to provide each county with one Direct Recording Electronic voting device (touch screen) per precinct. This equipment comes with headphones for the visually impaired and illiterate voters. Wood County has 85 precincts. The state has also agreed to provide one Model 650 optical scan ballot counter to each county.

Equipment is to be delivered before Dec. 31. Operations training of county personnel will be done before December, with software training and voter education completed by 2006.

"The key to the voter education is to do it as close as possible to the election, when people are really getting excited about the election," Greenhalgh said.

There are 10,000 precinct officials in the state that need to be trained.

There is a five-year maintenance agreement included with the state-provided equipment.

Counties have to decide what system they want to use to meet HAVA requirements and be within their own budget restraints. Wood is one of 28 counties using the optical scan system.

"We could see some drastic changes with regard to the ballot if super-precincts are created, either for early voting or the election. And those changes, if made, would change the number of machines a county would need," Wood County Commissioner Bob Tebay said, noting the number of early voters continues to grow with each election.

"We're seeing that trend all over the country. In Texas, they had 40 percent of their registered voters turn out for early voting," Greenhalgh said.

According to cost estimates provided by Wood County Clerk Jamie Six, for Wood County to have a dual system, which would include touch screens, with trade-ins and credits (for state items that would not be needed) the cost would be $234,107; a touch-screen system with credits and trade-ins would cost the county $304,141, and retaining optical scan with required touch screens to be compliant, and an Automark Voter Assist Terminal, with trade-ins and credits would cost the county $442,000. AutoMark is an Americans With Disabilities Act-version of optical scan which uses instructions delivered through headphones to take the visually impaired through the process. Once they make their ions, the equipment marks the ballot for them based on their choices.

The state is also offering counties a five-year, interest-free loan program for other equipment purchases.

ES&S will conduct the remaining regional meetings in Randolph County today, Raleigh County on Wednesday and in Monongalia County on Thursday.