Bedford County to vote in a new way

Victor Reklaitis The News and Advance  March 31, 2005  

Voters throughout Bedford County will use touch screen machines in this year?s November elections, after using lever machines for the last time in the upcoming June primaries.

This week, the Board of Supervisors approved spending about $412,000 on 112 touch screen machines for the county?s 29 voting precincts.

?I am very excited about it, and I think the citizens are going to be very pleased with it,? county registrar Barbara Gunter said Wednesday of the change.

The new machines come through the federal Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, which was passed in 2002 after disputes in Florida over the 2000 election results.

The federal government will reimburse Bedford County for the cost of the machines. It also has allotted the county an additional $52,000 (not $200,000, as reported Tuesday) that can be spent on training sessions for poll workers, informational mailings for voters and similar items.

The 112 machines, produced by Sequoia Voting Systems, will come from Atlantic Election Services Inc. Sequoia?s Edge equipment was unanimously recommended by a committee that reviewed a range of machines.

The committee was comprised of Gunter, the three-member Bedford County Electoral Board and county supervisors Roger Cheek and Bobby Pollard. As part of the review, the county used different vendors? machines at precincts in the last two elections, and tested machines at student government elections in county high schools.

The Board of Supervisors approved buying the machines with a 6-1 vote, with Stewartsville District Supervisor Dale Wheeler casting the lone dissenting vote.

?It?s just a very conservative protest vote on having to spend $400,000 of the government?s money,? Wheeler said Wednesday. ?(HAVA) was another government boondoggle, in my opinion.?