Left behind

Wyoming decision to stick to paper ballot ill-conceived

Opinion    Beckley Register-Herald    22 October 2005

Wyoming County officials have decided not to take advantage of federal monies to eliminate antiquated paper voting ballots.

Why?

Under the federal Help America Vote Act, each polling place is required to have one handicapped accessible voting machine in place by Jan. 1 and all punch card or lever machines must be replaced by the same time or counties must spend extensive amounts of money on voter education programs.

While 53 other counties in West Virginia are now on board (Braxton is also sticking with the paper) with either electronic touch screen voting or optical scan ballots, Wyoming County isn?t budging. Well, aren?t they special.

In the next election, voters in Wyoming County will be able to vote either on paper or at one of 41 handicapped accessible electronic voting stations. Then the tallies from the paper and computer will have to be merged. See how convoluted that is? It?s just a mess waiting to happen.

This refusal by county officials to switch throws up two red flags.

First, they are frittering away funds to assist them in something that they will, let us say that again, will be forced to do in the future. County Clerk Mike Goode told The Associated Press that, ?Just because something is free (which it?s not), does that mean you cram it down everybody?s throat??

Whoa, there, Mr. Goode. What century are you living in? Are you afraid of implementing much-needed change? How much is the required voter education going to cost? The taxpayers of Wyoming County will suffer from this tunnel vision approach, and sooner rather than later.

Two, and maybe the most worrisome, is that the appearance of impropriety now takes the stage, front and center.

We?ve all heard the stories about voter fraud in southern West Virginia. Switching to modern, computerized balloting systems will help to quell any of that chatter, everywhere, that is, other than Wyoming and Braxton counties.

Goode says Wyoming County residents are ?very comfortable? with the way they vote, which includes some people even marking their ballots in plain view of others so they don?t have to wait for a private voting station.

The paper system also requires the county to have twice as many poll workers, to which Goode replied: ?That also involves twice as many people in the election process.?

Commission president Russ Davis and Commissioner Harold Hayden are sided with Goode on this issue. Commissioner Sam Muscari is against it; at least somebody has some vision.

We believe there is nothing good, if you will, coming out of this approach in Wyoming County.

Paper ballots are just way too easy to be tampered with; they are a thing of the past, part of the country?s heritage.

Often we hear about how Wyoming County is left out of funding for new roads or potential economic development projects; we agree that they have been largely ignored. But failing to move forward on an issue like this just raises more questions and more concerns, makes state and federal lawmakers edgy when talking about future improvements there and gives the region an unneeded black eye.