County gets nearly $1 million to make ballot upgrades
Long-awaited money will help create paper trail for e-votes
Monday, June 20, 2005

By JAY GOETTING     Nappa Valley Register

Napa County will get nearly $1 million in long-awaited federal funds to aid in the transition to electronic touchscreen voting machines, ramped up voter education efforts and improved access to voter registration rolls.

Secretary of State Bruce McPherson is set to release the funds to California counties, but the money cannot be spent until the state Legislature approves the budget and gives McPherson spending authority.

Napa Registrar of Voters John Tuteur is already planning for its expenditure, which is linked to prior purchases as well as planning ahead for modifications to existing equipment.

The release of the funds comes more than a year later than originally anticipated. Allegations of improper use of the money were lodged against former Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, causing the delay.

Tuteur had his disagreements with Shelley, but said he had good dealings with Shelley's office and that appears to be continuing under McPherson's regime.

Tuteur will be preparing invoices totaling $468,000 already spent. That will be reimbursement to the county coffers. When that is combined with the cost of modifying the county's 350 touchscreen devices for the so-called VeriVote paper trail system, it will take most of the $891,111 in the current HAVA allocation.

In 2003, Tuteur battled Sacramento in an attempt to get Shelley to release $360,000 in funds earmarked under Proposition 41. When combined with the money from the Help America Vote Act, Napa County would have received $1.2 million to modernize its voting systems.

That is still somewhat less than originally hoped for.

The funds are known in bureaucratic parlance as Section 301 funds. They are part of a $195 million total coming to California under HAVA and administered and augmented under the state's Proposition 41.