Most voters give the system a thumbs up
Election officials report only some minor glitches

By REN?E C. LEE
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

Octogenarian Lucy Myrick embraces change even when it means ditching old-fashioned paper ballots in favor of high-tech voting machines.

''I thought, 'Why not?' I'm 87 years old. I might not have the chance (to vote) again," Myrick said after voting electronically for the first time at the Montgomery College polling site in The Woodlands.

On Tuesday, Myrick and thousands of voters in Houston's suburban areas got their first chance to use eSlate electronic voting systems in the March primaries. Most voters gave the new system ? in which a voter s a candidate by turning a wheel and pressing the enter button ? a thumbs up, saying it was fast and simple.

Brazoria, Galveston and Liberty counties joined Montgomery in going digital. Waller and Fort Bend counties used the new systems for the first time in November. Harris and Chambers counties have been using electronic voting since 2003.

Some results delayed
Except for a couple of minor glitches, election officials said, for the most part, voting went smoothly. Some counties, however, reported troubles with counting, which slightly delayed final results. Liberty County had a major delay.

In Brazoria County, electronic voting machines appeared to work perfectly in all but one of 97 polling places, said elections director Janice Evans.

An election judge accidentally broke an electrical pin at the back of one voting machine while setting up a Democratic polling place in the town of Brazoria, Evans said. "We used paper ballots until we got it fixed," she said. The broken pin put that machine, and all the other machines connected to it, out of commission, she said.

Paper or electronic?
Voters in Liberty and Galveston counties had a choice of paper or electronic voting. A precinct in Moss Bluff in Liberty County ran out of paper ballots late Tuesday, forcing voters to use a single electronic voting machine, election officials said. People coming to vote after work had to wait in a long line. Election officials had to extend voting until 8 p.m.

Liberty County officials also had major delays in tabulating votes. A disk with the paper ballot tallies was accidentally put into a sealed box with the actual paper ballots.

Election officials had to use special procedures to break the seal to get the disk so that the votes could be counted, said county clerk officials.
 

Counting was slower than expected in Galveston and Brazoria counties as well because of the new electronic counting methods for both paper and electronic votes.

County clerk Mary Ann Daigle said early voting was delayed because ''we're learning the system as we go."

''There was some preliminary tests of the system we had to run before we started the counting," Daigle added.

In Montgomery County, final tabulations were delayed by a precinct in Porter, said elections administrator Carol Gaultney. At 10 p.m., officials were still waiting for the election judge to arrive at the central election office in Conroe with the votes. Gaultney said she did not know what held up the election judge.

Carole Bowser, a precinct worker at the Galveston City Hall voting location, said most voters thought electronic voting was easy. Voter Claudette Stinson, 50, a clerical worker, agreed.

"It was better than that paper thing," said Stinson. "You didn't have to worry about which end of the ballot to stick in a box. You just pushed a button and it was done.

"It was quick, fast and easy," she said. "After I got the hang of it, it was fun."

Sticking with the familiar
Liberty County resident Joan Arabie decided to stick with the familiar paper ballot.

''It's terrifying to begin with," said Arabie, who voted at the Calvary Baptist Church polling site in Moss Bluff. "A machine would be controlling me, so I chose a handwritten ballot."

At Geraldine D. Humphreys Cultural Center in Liberty, election judge Bennie Wells said only about a third of the voters used electronic voting. ''A lot of people just aren't used to change," Wells said.

James Crabb, an election clerk in Montgomery County, said most people were accepting of the new system and were able to navigate the machines. The only trouble was that some people tried to touch the screen to make their ion instead of using the manual wheel, Crabb said.

Myrick said she liked the new system because she could easily go back to previous screens to check her votes before casting her ballot. She double-checked to make sure she voted for her daughter, a county treasurer hopeful, and her grandson, a candidate for county clerk.

Machines easy to use
Voters in Angleton also found the machines easy to use.

"It's more fun," quipped John Chalick.

While Allen Hammons said "I love it," about the electronic machines, he said he felt uncomfortable about there being no paper records of the votes cast. "There needs to be more accountability," he said.