Bucks group plans to watch voting machine changes
Forum will be held to discuss required electronic equipment.

By Hal Marcovitz
Of The Morning Call??? 15 June 2005

Leaders of a new watchdog group said Wednesday they hope to monitor Bucks County commissioners' plans to buy electronic voting machines, which the county government is required to do by the end of the year.

Mary Ann Gould, an organizer of the Bucks County Coalition for Voting Integrity, said the group's first project is to stage a forum on voting machine technology as well as the pitfalls of switching to new machines.

The forum is slated for 7 p.m. June 27 at the courthouse in Doylestown. The scheduled speakers include Rebecca Mercuri, a computer science professor at Harvard University who has written about issues with electronic voting; and Michelle Mulder, an aide to U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat who has sponsored amendments to the 2002 Help America Vote Act. That law requires the county to scrap its mechanical machines.

Also set to speak at the forum are Rev. Robert Moore, a voting rights activist from Princeton, N.J., and Lynn Landes, a freelance journalist who has covered voting fraud issues.

''We'd like to see a decision made countywide that involves voters on what type of machines and processes would guarantee the integrity of our votes,'' Gould said. ''All of us know the problems that exist when voting by new methods.''

The county has employed mechanical voting machines at its more than 300 polling places since the 1950s, but the machines do not meet the standards set by the Help America Vote Act. The devices have no way of informing voters that they may have missed casting ballots in all races. Also, the machines are not regarded as handicap-accessible.

Commissioners have applied for a $3 million state grant to help purchase new voting machines. If the county receives the grant, the commissioners believe they also would have to provide up to $5 million to buy the machines. Under the act, commissioners must buy new machines by Dec. 31 and train elections officials to operate them for the spring 2006 primary.

Commissioner Charles H. Martin insisted the old machines work fine and the Help America Vote Act is an unfunded mandate. ''The Help America Vote Act is a good example of what happens when you rush into something without it being well thought out,'' he said.

Chief Operating Officer David Sanko said the state Elections Bureau is assessing voting machine models to determine which comply with the requirements of the law. The agency expects to establish the list of certified models by the end of June. At that point, he said, the state expects to negotiate a price for the machines through multicounty agreements, or the county could ask for bids on its own.

Martin predicted that by September, the county should know which models it can buy. He suggested it might be possible to stage public demonstrations of the machines or schedule similar forums so that voters can participate in the decision-making process.