Paper backup to electronic voting ahead

By Christopher Schwarzen    Seattle Times    29 June 2005

Snohomish County's elections division likely will spend more than $1 million for equipment that provides a paper backup to electronic voting.

The purchase is planned despite trends showing Snohomish County voters moving primarily to mail-in ballots and away from casting votes at polling stations.

The County Council, saying voters aren't ready to give up their options, backed the expenditure Monday, despite the fact the money will come from an unwritten 2006 budget. Election officials say the purchase must be made soon to comply with a state law requiring paper backup by January.

Under state law, counties offering electronic voting must use equipment with a "voter-verifiable audit trail." The paper ballots produced at the electronic stations would be used only in manual recounts and for auditing, county election officials say.

But a trend shows a decreased need for voting machines. In April, 61 percent of 359,000 Snohomish County voters were registered to receive absentee ballots. About 900 electronic voting machines were in use to collect the rest of those available votes.

Estimates anticipate mail-in percentages increasing to 70 percent by December 2006 and 82 percent by December 2009, according to the county Auditor's Office, which oversees elections.

The number of electronic voting machines ? and backup paper units ? is expected to decrease during those periods, to 700 by December 2006 and 450 by December 2009.

Already, 25 of the state's counties are switching to mail-only elections, mainly because it's cheaper, said Carolyn Diepenbrock, Snohomish County's elections manager. Nine other counties are considering the change. Only five counties, including King, Pierce and Snohomish counties, say they won't do it yet, Diepenbrock said.

King, Pierce and Snohomish counties account for nearly 60 percent of the state's registered voters, meaning it would be hard for the Legislature to approve a statewide switch to mail-only elections. But in Pierce County, nearly 80 percent of voters already are mailing in ballots.
  
Snohomish County Council Chairman Gary Nelson said he sees more security in electronic voting over mail-in ballots and pointed to the number of illegal mail-in ballots scrutinized in King County after last year's gubernatorial race. Snohomish County isn't ready to go to a mail-only system until the state works out better ways to verify voters' signatures, he said.

"At this point, you'd have to have everyone re-register to vote by mail just to signatures," Nelson said. "I know we have inaccuracies now in our system."

Instead of the $1 million-plus purchase to back up electronic voting machines, switching now to a mail-only system would be cheaper, Diepenbrock said.

But council members said the machines could be sold when they were no longer needed, offsetting part of the expense.