Many
counties returning to paper ballots
By Chris Metinko
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
One of the
first counties in the state to embrace electronic voting is headed back to
paper -- and it's not the only one.
Alameda County residents going to the polls June 6 will be asked for
the first time in five years to fill in ovals on paper ballots rather than
casting their votes on costly touch-screen machines.
"It's a little bit of back to the
future," joked Elaine Ginnold, the county's acting registrar of
voters.
The decision to go back to paper stems
from changes in state law that toughen requirements for touch-screen
machines and render the county's equipment inadequate.
Merced and Plumas counties also will switch back to paper
ballots. And earlier this week Los
Angeles officials agreed to upgrade their current
optical scan system that counts paper ballots instead of spending more than
$100 million to buy a touch-screen system.
"The laws for electronic voting are
changing at a dizzying pace," said Conny McCormack, registrar-recorder
and clerk for Los Angeles
County. "We've
seen how other counties have gone out and bought systems and in a few years
they can't even use them. For us, with the kind of financial commitment
we'd need to make, it doesn't make sense at this time."
All of this contrasts with the rush to
touch-screen voting after the Florida
ballot-counting fiasco in the 2000 presidential election. To be sure, none
of the California
counties will return to the famous punch-card systems that made
"chad" a regular part of the political lexicon.
After that election, many counties bought
electronic systems. Since then, however, experts have raised questions
about the accuracy of the machines and state officials have imposed new
requirements, including mandates for a paper trail to prevent voter fraud.
At the same time, more voters are turning to mail-in ballots, which makes
the future of electronic voting murkier than ever.
"The rules have changed for
e-voting," said Stephen Weir, clerk-recorder for Contra Costa
County. "Now
they need to have a paper trail and that means major modifications done to
these machines. That isn't a simple process. It's very awkward. That said,
e-voting technology is continuing to grow. It's not finished."
There are counties in the state that
agree. At least 13, including Santa Clara
and Napa,
plan to use electronic voting as their primary system in June. Some of those
counties retrofitted their machines to make them eligible for the June
election, while others bought newer, updated versions.
Nevertheless, it's hard to ignore Alameda County's move back to paper. While
it is not the first Bay Area county to go back to paper -- Solano County
did the same after its machines were decertified in November 2003 -- Alameda County
is especially interesting because it was the first in the region to move to
electronic voting and the second in the state behind Riverside County.
The county purchased its now-outdated
Diebold electronic voting system for $12 million in 2001. However, the
equipment had glitches. Diebold eventually agreed in 2004 to pay the state
and Alameda County $2.6 million to settle a
lawsuit alleging that it made false claims when it sold its equipment to
the county.
The settlement came after local and state
officials found that Diebold had installed uncertified software in the
county's touch-screen machines and that its system was vulnerable to
computer hackers. County elections officials also found the system's
vote-tabulating program gave several thousand absentee votes to the wrong
candidate during the October 2003 gubernatorial recall election.
Now the county is hoping to put those
problems in the past. It plans to borrow optical scan equipment to count
the paper ballots in June and is in negotiations with two vendors for a
"hybrid" or blended voting system it hopes to use in November
that would also rely heavily on paper.
That system -- which could cost between $8
million and $18 million -- would require most voters to use paper ballots
but would supply a small number of touch-screens, mainly for the disabled.
The new system also would provide scanners
at polling sites to help count ballots while also reading each ballot to
see if it was filled out properly. Under federal law, voters can receive a
new ballot if the scanners discover an error has been made.
There is another potential benefit of
having the scanning system, adds Ginnold, the acting registrar. Counties
need scanners anyway to count the increasing number of mail-in ballots. Out
of the approximately 345,000 registered voters in Alameda County
expected to cast ballots in June, nearly 40 percent will never make it to
the polls.
Nevertheless, even those who have been
conservative in choosing the voting system their counties will use admit
electronic voting is a likely part of future elections.
"We feel it has value and is
accurate," said McCormack, who's own Los Angeles County
has touch-screens for early voting. "Many of the people who use them
love them. It's just the laws change too fast -- and it's a lot of money --
to commit to a system that may be unusable in a few years."
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