Vote board nervous over deadline

By Mark Binker    Greensboro News-Record    02 December 2005 

RALEIGH ? State election officials are racing against what some call ?impossible? deadlines to prepare for the May primary and warned Thursday that voters should be prepared for problems next spring.

?For this timetable to work, the gods are going to have to smile upon you and every little thing has to fall into place,? said Larry Leak, chairman of the State Board of Elections.

A combination of new state and federal laws will force North Carolina?s 100 counties, including Guilford, to replace or upgrade their automated voting equipment for the May primary.

Board members gave tentative approval Thursday to new voting machines made by three companies. But it will be late December or January before counties will be able to order new machines.

Early voting is scheduled to start in mid-April, and the systems would have to be in place by then.

?I think the General Assembly has set an unreasonably aggressive schedule for this equipment to be replaced,? said Chuck Winfree, a board member from Greensboro. ?I don?t think the deadlines are going to be met.?

Board members directed the elections staff to start thinking about contingency plans for counties that were either unable or unwilling to put new voting equipment in place.

When asked what he thought some of those contingencies might be, Leak said, ?paper ballots,? which would have to be marked and counted by hand. He also said that the board could ask for a special session of the General Assembly to change the date of next year?s primary to give counties more time to put their voting systems in place.

?The bottom line is we want the public to be aware...this is an extremely tight schedule,? Leak said. ?Any hiccups of any sort will result in us having to do something extraordinary.?

Board members speculated that if there were only a small number of problem counties, they may be able to find some temporary solution that uses older voting equipment.

?The state board is being realistic in expecting trouble,? said George Gilbert, Guilford County?s elections director. Guilford currently uses equipment made by ES&S but will have to buy new machines to comply with state standards that require machines to produce a paper record.

Gilbert predicted that Guilford County would be able to move speedily enough to have new machines in place by mid-April.

?We?re not new at this,? he said, noting the county has used three different voting systems during the past 18 years. But problems will be compounded because N.C. counties are not the only ones that will have to make changes next year.

?It?s happening nationwide,? Gilbert said. ?And there are not enough competent people employed by the vendors to support all the jurisdictions individually.?

Some counties, he said, may have trouble getting the experts they need to put the new voting equipment in place.

The three voting machine companies given tentative approval Thursday ? all three must meet certain requirements in the next several weeks before they can start selling ? were Diebold, Sequoia and ES&S.

Diebold asked a Superior Court judge to set aside a provision in the state voting law that requires companies to turn over their computer code for scrutiny. They worried that it would not be able to legally turn over software made by other companies, such as the operating systems manufactured by Microsoft.

A judge denied that request this week, and lawyers for Diebold said the company would have to withdraw from bidding on work in the state.

A compromise allows the state to rely on computer code already escrowed by companies like Microsoft. Diebold is expected to get at least some county contracts.