Voting method to lower errors
System to be used in May primary
By JOSHUA STEWART
York Daily Record/Sunday News
Sunday, October 16, 2005

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Adams County is putting in place a voting system intended to help reduce voter error, but the new system will not be in effect until the May 2006 primary.

Voters will feed their ballots through an optical scanner that will count votes and check to see if the ballot contains any errors, Monica Dutko, Adams County director of elections.

For example, if a ballot asks a voter to vote for two people for a position, but the voter s three, the ballot will be spit back to the voter, who can then request a new ballot and correct the mistake, she said.

The current system does not tolerate mistakes, Dutko said.

?Once it was in the ballot box, they were out of luck. Now they have a second chance,? she said.

The change is possible because of a new way that votes will be tallied.

The county uses a centralized counting system, Dutko said. A voter puts a ballot into a ballot box, and after polls close, boxes from each precinct are collected and transported to the courthouse, where the ballots are optically scanned and tallied.

Election officials then total the votes and create a countywide result sheet.

Beginning with the 2006 primary, before voters put their votes into ballot boxes, they will feed ballots through a scanner that records the vote and adds it to a running total, Dutko said. After polls close, the scanners print out a total. The numbers from the scanner printouts from each precinct are then totaled by a computer at the courthouse and a grand total for the county is announced.

The new system will create a countywide result sheet faster, Dutko said.

Voters should not notice a change in the voting experience, Dutko said.

The new method is a result of the 2002 Help America Vote Act, Dutko said.

HAVA, which is, in part, a response to the vote-counting problems in Florida during the 2000 Bush-Gore election, provides funding for states to improve their voting process and make polling more uniform, said Dr. Bruce Larson, a political science professor at Gettysburg College with expertise in congressional elections.

?It?s a huge challenge to maintain the integrity of the systems, especially when they are costly,? he said.

It is important to have a system that allows voters to correct their errors, Larson said.

But counting ballots at precincts has its drawbacks. More equipment means there are more ways things can go wrong, and more observers are required to monitor the counting process.

?There?s more room for efficiency, but more room for screw-ups,? Larson said.

There is no problem with counting ballots at precincts as long as they are counted accurately, he said.

The new ballot counting system requires an optical scanner at each precinct, Dutko said. The county has yet to purchase new machines because the state is in the process of approving scanners. The county will contract for the new hardware by Jan. 1, Dutko said.

Every county in Pennsylvania has received a federal grant to cover the of voting machines or to buy new ones, Dutko said.