Battle brews over voting system
By Jo Mannies
St. Louis POST-DISPATCH     10/11/2005

The St. Louis County Election Board is advertising for bids for a new voting system that could cost roughly $12 million - a price tag that's $5 million more than some county officials say they can afford.

County Executive Charlie A. Dooley and some council members have maintained that any new system should cost no more than the roughly $7 million in federal aid that the county will receive.

But Election Board Chairman John Diehl says that won't happen, based on the estimates that he's seen for complying with the new federal mandates that go into effect Jan. 1. All other jurisdictions in the state have had to spend more than the federal allotment, he said.

Diehl is invoking a 1954 state Supreme Court decision to make his point that the County Council will have no official voice in ing the new systems or awarding the contracts, although it will have to pay the bill.
"Everybody's operating under the assumption that we're a county department, but we're not," Diehl said. "We're an autonomous body."

That's news to some council members.

"We have a complete say-so in their funding," said Council Skip Mange, R-Town and Country. "They have to come to us for the money to do it."

That debate is almost identical to the one that was played out in 1954 before the state Supreme Court, which sided with the Election Board in a dispute with the County Council over which company would get the contract for new voting machines.

The council wanted the lower bid; the Election Board preferred the more expensive machines, saying they were more voter-friendly. The state's highest court ruled that the Election Board had the power, and said the County Council's only "ministerial role" was to sign the check.

Jim Baker, Dooley's director of administration, said he's been in talks with Diehl. "We're going to try to come up with a solution that works for everyone," Baker said.

The county currently uses punch-card ballots, which are being phased out by most other jurisdictions in Missouri and around the country as part of the new federal mandates that take effect Jan. 1. The federal Help America Vote Act doesn't require that jurisdictions punch-card ballots, but it imposes a number of new requirements that would be hard to meet - and pay for - if punch cards are retained.

The act requires that a contract for new voting systems be signed by Dec. 31 in order to get the federal aid. Some of the money must go for a specified number of voting machines that are accessible for the blind and disabled.

The Election Board's formal request for bids, posted on its Web site, calls for a "hybrid system" that would include optical scanners, which read special paper ballots, and touch-screen machines similar to bank automatic tellers.

The deadline for bids is Nov. 1. Diehl said the Election Board would spend November going through the proposals, then submit its final plan to the County Council in early December.

"I don't want to sound flip, but how they pay for it is not really our concern," he said. "We are sensitive to the county's budget problems, but our primary concern is to run good elections."