KC voting booth will look different in 2006

By DAVE HELLING

The Kansas City Star    04 December 2005

 

Kansas City voters will have a choice between two new voting procedures in 2006.

The city?s election board decided last week to purchase a ?blended? system of voting machines that will include newer, more expensive touch-screen voting and an older, cheaper optical scan system. The system will replace Kansas City?s 30-year-old punch card system.

Touch-screen machines are used in Johnson County. Optical scan voting machines require voters to fill out a paper ballot, which is then read by a computer, and have been used in Cass, Clay, Wyandotte, and Platte counties for years.

The board?s decision Thursday came despite the concerns of some staff members, who said poll workers would have to learn how to operate and maintain two kinds of voting machines. But supporters of the blended system said the lower price outweighed those worries.

?I think optical scan will eventually die,? said director Ray James, a Republican. ?But buying all touch-screen machines is just too expensive.?

Under the blended plan, each of the city?s polling places will use one touch-screen machine. That machine will satisfy new federal requirements that each polling place in the country provide one voting booth for disabled persons, although any voter could use the touch-screen machine.

In addition, each polling place ? roughly 200 across the city ? would use one optical scan ballot-counting machine.

Both systems would provide a paper audit trail, which is required in Missouri.

The board is considering five proposals. The cost savings from a blended system are dramatic.

The least expensive proposal, from Ohio-based Diebold, would cost less than $2 million. And, because the federal government will pay for the touch-screen machines plus most of the cost to replace existing punch-card systems with optical scan, the cost to local taxpayers would be less than $35,000. By contrast, an all touch-screen system would have cost local taxpayers more than $5 million after federal payments.

The board spent two hours Thursday reviewing cost estimates and performance. Despite the lower cost, some board members said they were reluctant to pick Diebold because of what they called ?intangibles.?

?There have been an enormous number of controversial articles (about Diebold),? said chairwoman Melodie Powell. ?That really, really concerns me.?

Diebold has denied accusations of voting problems lodged by the public in Kansas City and elsewhere.

In any case, the board hasn?t picked a specific voting machine vendor, although members hope to do so in the next two weeks.

That means it?s unlikely the machines can be used in the April election. Unless Kansas City has a special election in June, board members said, the new system will get its first use in the primary in August ? when a heavy turnout is expected.