New voting equipment to utilize paper ballots

By Candace Cooksey Fulton ? Brownwood Bulletin   25 October 2005
  

Brown County voters will continue to vote by tried and true paper ballots in future elections, but technological and electronic additions are being made to the system.

On Monday, Brown County Commissioners voted unanimously to contract with Election Systems & Software, a company headquartered in Liberty Hill, to supply approximately 20 AutoMark voting machines and as many precinct vote counters as are affordable for the $273,000 grant money made available to the county through the state of Texas since the 2002 passage of the federal Help America Vote Act.

Jason Barnett, a technical sales associate with ES&S, held up a sample paper ballot to commissioners and the half dozen or so attending Monday?s meeting and said, ?With this, with paper, you can vote by candle ? with pencil, pen, blood, whatever.?

While all voters will have paper ballots, the AutoMark will bring the polling places in each precinct into HAVA compliance. Voters who may be sight impaired or illiterate, disabled by disease or spinal injury and must rely on ?sip and puff? mechanisms or who do not speak English will be able to vote using the AutoMark and keep the privacy and anonymity of their vote intact. They also will have the paper ballot, but mark it electronically with the AutoMark, which is equipped with head phone speakers that give an audio version of the printed ballot in English and Spanish. Instructions for using the machine are in Braille.

Barnett demonstrated the AutoMark and the precinct vote counter at Monday?s meeting. The vote counter will inform a voter if he?s under-voted or over-voted, and return the ballot to the voter if he wants to make a correction. But the approved ballot will pass directly from the vote counter into a ballot box.

Barnett said ES&S has contracted with 152 counties in Texas and has several statewide contracts in other states. While the move had been toward electronics, many counties and states have recognized the value of having a paper trail or physical evidence with the voters? mark.

?Voters have a certain comfort level with paper,? Barnett said.

?Paper will not go away,? Barnett continued, and again holding up the sample, added, ?This is the ultimate document, it is the ultimate paper trail. The optical scanner (precinct counter) will count the votes faster and more efficiently, but if there?s any question the paper ballots are intact to be recounted.?

Monday?s meeting was another 9 a.m. until nearly noon discussion, but those attending the meeting ? most of whom were election judges ? seemed intent on having all questions answered and concerns addressed.

Bob Steger addressed the court a week ago in favor of using an all-electronic voting machine and minimizing the number of paper ballots to just mail-in votes, stood on Monday and said, ?I?ve changed my mind, Judge. This is the way we need to go.?

Bett Weedon, an election judge said she too had been in favor of the all electronic, but said Monday of the AutoMark, ?I?m more confident of this.?

The details of the contract with ES&S will be worked out to use all of the grant money available, which is only available until Dec. 31. The machines and counters should be delivered by that time and training would be done before early voting begins for the March primaries.