Voters getting touch-screen machines
Warren freeholders plan to spend $1.6M, 75% of which will be reimbursed by state.
Friday, October 14, 2005
By SARA LEITCH??? The Express-Times

Warren County freeholders voted unanimously Wednesday to buy 200 electronic touch-screen voting machines by the end of the year from a Princeton-based company.

The freeholders voted to spend $1.637 million on Avante's Vote-Trakker machines. The state will reimburse 75 percent of the cost of the new machines. Voters could be using them as soon as April's school board election.

Election administrator Mary Meyers said she was pleased the freeholders bought the machines the election board recommended.??

"Avante's going to assist us in training poll workers, and we're going to keep showing it to the public," Meyers said. "We'll continue to do that through the winter months. We'd especially like to target senior citizens' centers to make sure they're comfortable with it."

The county was required to buy the new machines under the federal Help America Vote Act, passed in 2002. The act requires machines to notify voters if they've forgotten to vote for an office or tried to vote for more than one candidate, be accessible to disabled voters and contain ballots in more than one language.

Freeholder John DiMaio said he wasn't happy the county was being forced to buy new machines, when the current ones work just fine.

"I believe we had a good system in place," DiMaio said. "However, the federal law compelled us to do this."

But DiMaio said he thought the Avante machines were voter-friendly, and the current machines would have had to be upgraded or replaced at some point in the future.

"We're getting a new system for a very small percentage of the county tax dollar," he said.

The machines cost $6,000 each; because of the state reimbursement, the county will have to pay about $1,500 apiece, as well as $50,000 to store them in a climate-controlled warehouse and to hire movers to deliver the 225-pound units for elections. Voters can see the entire ballot displayed on the 30-inch touch screen, or zoom in on one race to see candidates' names in larger type.

The storage cost is similar to the maintenance fees for the current voting machines, Meyers said.

"It's kind of like a wash in that area," she said.

Avante's machines are capable of creating a paper printout of each voters' choices, though the law doesn't require that until 2008. Voters will be able to look at the printouts, but can't take them from the polls. That's to prevent people from trying to buy votes, Meyers said.