More time needed to decide on voting gear

By Brad Turner
The Daily Times-Call    14 November 2005

BOULDER ? County leaders want more time to consider a request for $3.6 million in new voting equipment and four new employees from the Boulder County clerk?s office.

Commissioners completed most of their appropriations for the 2006 county budget, including $560,000 to lease more space for the clerk?s office, Nov. 3.

But they placed several of clerk Linda Salas? pricey requests on hold, saying they want elections coordinator Josh Liss to justify each expense.

?We want to know a lot more about what systems they?re talking about,? Commissioner Ben Pearlman said. ?We want to approve a particular system, not just approve money generally.?

The $3.6 million elections system overhaul would allow the county to place at least one handicap-accessible voting machine in each of its 227 precincts, as required by the 2002 Help America Vote Act, Liss said.

The elections department currently uses eight ballot scanners by manufacturer Hart InterCivic, purchased in 2004 for $1.4 million. The system came under fire in November 2004 when it rejected thousands of ballots due to tiny printing imperfections, forcing workers to hand-count many votes. The tally lasted 68 hours.

Liss wants to augment the Hart machines ? which performed well in the Nov. 1 mail election ? with 250 units that would read and count ballots at the precinct level, allowing for more speedy, efficient elections.

?It would be much, much faster,? Liss said.

The 16,000 square feet of extra space, approved by the commissioners Nov. 3, will house the new machines between elections.

Hart will likely be considered as a vendor when the county shops for precinct-level scanners early next year, Liss said.

Commissioner Tom Mayer, who questioned Hart representatives in January 2004 before buying the system, said he will be skeptical of Hart?s sales pitch this time around. Company officials initially claimed their system would take hours, not days, to tally the November 2004 election, he said.

?I felt we asked the right questions,? Mayer said. ?The responses we got and the experience we saw didn?t match up, and that concerns me.?

County officials will discuss the purchase of the precinct-level machines in public forums before making a purchase no matter which vendor is ed, Mayer added.

The commissioners also want to hear Liss? argument for beefing up the county?s election staff, which is smaller than elections offices in surrounding counties.

Currently, the elections office has the equivalent of 51/2 full-time employees. Salas wants the equivalent of 31/2 more employees next year, for a total staff of nine.

The four new positions would include a public outreach worker and a trainer for election volunteers and would cost an estimated $129,912, according to the request. After last year?s election, Salas took heat from a nine-person Election Review Committee that found voter education and volunteer training were subpar leading up to Election Day.

The new hires are long overdue, Liss said. More than 75,000 new residents moved to Boulder County in the past 20 years, but the elections department added just half an FTE to its staff during that time, he said.

The commissioners want more specifics about what the new employees? responsibilities would be before they approve a 64 percent staff increase for the elections office, Pearlman said.

?We don?t know what they would be doing on a daily basis,? he said.

Though the clerk?s office requested the funds as part of its budget proposal for next year, the commissioners can wait until next year to appropriate the money because it does not come from the county?s general fund, Liss said. The $3.6 million is the remainder of a $5 million election system-replacement fund established by the previous board of commissioners.

Liss said he is still waiting for specific, written questions from the commissioners.