Mailboxes may be only vote venue
By Guy Ashley   CONTRA COSTA TIMES   07 January 2006

OAKLAND - With controversy and technical problems dogging electronic voting equipment, Alameda County's chief elections official has proposed an unprecedented option: eliminating most polling places for next June's statewide primary and asking county voters to mail in their ballots instead.

"With all the concerns about equipment even certified equipment it seems to me that to spend millions of dollars on new equipment at this point might not be very wise," said Elaine Ginnold, the county's acting registrar of voters. "Luckily, there's another alternative: a mail ballot election where you don't have to buy all this equipment."

Most counties in California officially fell out of compliance this week with new rules requiring that election systems be accessible to voters with disabilities.

That is because most counties, including Alameda, are in possession of e-voting equipment that is not certified by the state. Another requirement that took effect Sunday, that all e-voting systems provide voters with paper receipts to verify their votes, prompted 17 counties to plan upgrades of their systems to be ready this year.

But so far, only one manufacturer has gained state certification. Alameda and 16 other counties who had planned to purchase upgraded machines made by Diebold Elections Systems have been left in limbo as Diebold has struggled to gain state certification.

Ginnold said time is running out for Alameda County if it wants to conduct the June election with touch-screens: there are polling places to set up, and poll workers to hire and train on the new equipment. Instead, she says, going the mail route is probably a more practical and likely less expensive option.

Under this scenario, the county would ask most voters to mail in their ballots, while a small number of machines would be purchased and made available to disabled voters. This route, she said, would greatly reduce the cost of providing machines in polling places across the county.

An election by mail would follow Alameda County's voting trends anyway, Ginnold said. The number of county voters currently signed up to vote by mail stands at 37 percent; 47 percent of voters chose to vote by mail in Alameda County in November's election, she said.

If all goes according to plan, Ginnold said she would not be surprised if Alameda County chooses eventually to conduct all of its elections by mail.

For top county officials, support for this idea may come down to cost, she said. If the county conducts this June's election only by mail, Ginnold said, the expected $2.7 million cost could be reduced by as much as $1 million.

"That's not small change," she said.