Ballot debate remains in flux
    

By Los Angeles Times
Wednesday, January 4, 2006

Five years after the vote-counting debacle in Florida suspended the election of a new U.S. president, states are embroiled in a contentious debate over how voters should cast ballots.

The maligned punch cards that snarled the 2000 count are all but gone. But with electronic machines under attack as unreliable and vulnerable to hackers, there is little consensus about what the new technology should be.

That has left many counties nationwide in turmoil as they struggle with unproven technology while state regulations remain in flux and the federal government offers minimal guidance.

In some places, voters are facing their third balloting system in five years.

Westmoreland County's commissioners approved purchasing touch-screen voting machines from a Nebraska company despite hearing concerns at a recent meeting from people who believe they were making the wrong choice.

"I implore you with every fiber of my being to give it further study," Marybeth Kuznik, a county election inspector and founder of the grassroots alliance VotePA, told the commissioners.

Kuznik was reacting to the county's ion of Election Systems and Software, of Omaha, to replace levered voting machines as part of the Help America Vote Act. She said the ES&S touch-screen model the county purchased has been shown to have problems at polling places throughout the nation.

Westmoreland County will pay about $2.2 million to purchase the new voting system. The project would be paid for by state grants.

Kuznik said Westmoreland votes will be lost in the system because the machines ed do not have the ability to produce verified paper records to be used in recounts. Pending legislation in Harrisburg would require such records.

Election Bureau Director Paula Pedicone said new machines will be retrofitted with equipment to produce the records if a law is passed.

Ed Matthews, owner of William Penn Printing, of Pittsburgh, said retrofitting is projected to cost $475 per machine. Westmoreland County is ordering 750 of them. William Penn Printing is representing ES&S in Pennsylvania.

"If we had our choice, we'd stay with the lever machines for eternity," Commissioner Chairman Tom Balya said. "They're low maintenance and they've lasted for 45 years."

County officials, concerned about a possible learning curve for poll workers and voters alike, said they want to ensure the touch-screen voting machines are delivered well before the spring primary.

Bill Gilmore has been Westmoreland County's guru of election machines for the past 30 years.

When one of the old lever machines breaks down, Gilmore is the man who makes repairs. "I couldn't tear one completely apart and put it back together again, but basic maintenance I know," said Gilmore, 50, of Youngwood.

New computer-based machines will replace the reliable but heavy and clunky machines used for the last half-century.

And that'll be OK with Gilmore.

"I'm going to miss the voting machines, but with their age and the year we're at now, it's time for a new voting machine. Our lever machines can't be beat, but they're cumbersome, heavy and expensive to keep going," Gilmore said.

During the most recent election in November, Westmoreland County used only 603 machines. The remaining units have been kept on standby as replacements, while about 20 others are stored in the back of a county warehouse, cannibalized for parts.

The lever machines cost about $4,000 a year in repairs and another $62,000 annually to transport to more than 300 precincts throughout the county. Pedicone said it takes about 10 days to ship out the machines to each precinct.

Newer, computer-based machines will be smaller, cheaper to operate and electronically would keep track of vote totals.

Fayette County is slated to receive $1.1 million in state grants to replace its 211 lever voting machines. County officials insist it will cost twice that amount to purchase a new voting system, educate poll workers and some of the 105 precincts.

"I have no problem with these machines," Fayette County Elections Bureau Director Laurie Nicholson said of the old lever voting booths. "The only time I have to go for repairs is if they're ped."

In California, counties have lurched from one voting system to another as the state has written and rewritten standards. Several counties are scrambling to redo their June election plans after the state's top elections official raised new questions last month about an electronic voting machine in use for years.

Mercer County, officials want to keep their electronic machines but were ordered by state authorities to take them out of service after glitches during the 2004 presidential election.

"It pretty much left the county up a tree," said Tom Rookey, elections chief of the Steel Belt county on the Ohio border.

In Connecticut, the secretary of state is tussling with the federal government over how quickly the state must replace its decades-old lever-style voting machines with electronic machines.

Indiana's largest county has sued the company that sold it electronic voting machines. Across the border in Ohio, the same company has sued the state.

"It's been crazy," said San Diego County Registrar of Voters Mikel Haas, who said he is returning to paper ballots because the state refused to recertify more than 10,000 electronic machines the county bought two years ago. "Everyone is in uncharted territory here."

The arcane world of voting technology and ballot counting once drew little attention from anyone other than elections officials.

But 2000 changed everything.

"Everyone looked at what was coming out of Florida scenes of judges squinting to look at ballots and agreed there had to be a better way to do this," said Doug Chapin, head of the nonpartisan Election Reform Information Project. "There was a real push toward computerized, paperless machines to get away from these chads."