Sacramento County plans for touch-screen voting machines
By Cameron Jahn Bee Staff Writer
Published 5:15 p.m. PST Tuesday, March 30, 2004
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Sacramento County elections officials are moving toward an historic change in the way voters here cast ballots: touch-screen voting machines.

Elections officials aim to put out a request for proposals Thursday for a new voting system that will provide at least one touch-screen machine in more than 800 polling places for the Nov. 7 presidential election.

 "We're working eight hours a day to go over every line" of the request, Jill LaVine, the county's registrar of voters, said Tuesday during the Board of Supervisors' first post-election status report on the purchase of a new voting system.

"Timing will be short to get a successful bidder, and it will have to be done right to have a system in place by November."

The county has $11 million to buy new electronic voting equipment as a result of state and federal legislation passed after the 2000 presidential election contest in Florida discredited punch-card voting machines, the kind previously used in Sacramento County. Touch-screen machines would also help the county comply with a federal law requiring all voters, including the disabled, to cast their ballots without help from another person by 2005.

Such a voting system could cost as much as $25 million, leaving the county on the hook for as much as $14 million, officials said.

Voters in 14 counties statewide used touch-screen voting machines during the March primary election.