Voting machine purchase plans ensure integrity

By Fran Leber    Mississippi LWV    12 August 2005
Special to The Clarion-Ledger

The integrity of the vote is essential to a functioning democracy. For people to govern themselves, they must have access to the voting booth and know that their vote, once cast, will be counted equal to any other vote cast in each election.

The Help America Vote Act (HAVA), passed in October of 2002, was designed in part to help states and counties purchase more accurate voting machines and make many of the historic risks to the integrity of the voting process a thing of the past.

Touch-screen machines in particular are designed to be handicapped accessible; seniors and others who have limited eyesight or reading skills, hearing problems, or who cannot walk into a voting booth will be able to cast a machine ballot just like anyone else.

Statewide purchase best

Problems with the old lever machines breaking down and the notorious pregnant and hanging chads of the push-pin ballots will be eliminated.

The most frustrating of problems for voters ? finding that you have marked the ballot in the wrong place or voted for more than one candidate or skipped a slate of candidates will be minimized by the opportunity to review and change the ballot before it is cast.

If HAVA is fully funded, Mississippi will receive about $34 million in federal funds. Part of the money allocated will be used to buy new voting machines for the counties.

Secretary of State Eric Clark will use the first installments of these funds to purchase 5,164 Diebold touch-screen voting machines to be divvied up among the 82 counties according to their voter turnout averaged over the last four statewide elections.

Because of the logic of bulk purchasing, the more counties that choose to opt in and participate in the statewide purchase by August 19, the more machines the state can buy.

Counties that choose not to participate in the statewide purchase plan must still have HAVA-approved machines and will receive partial federal funding for their purchase. The machines will come with the ballot software, tech support, intensive training, and a five-year maintenance agreement.

These machines were chosen because they had the lowest bid and because the team chosen to evaluate the machines, including local election officials and representatives of the handicapped community, thought they had the best product. Georgia has a 97 percent voter approval rating with these machines.

Printing trail is available

Several groups both statewide and nationally have raised objections to the touch-screen machines. They worry about the lack of a "paper trail." This is a valid concern. In fact, however, touch screen machines now used in Hinds and Rankin counties print paper tallies before the polls are open and after the polls are closed, allowing poll workers to double-check vote totals.

The new machines would also keep an image of every vote cast, and will be retro-fitted with a printer that will print out a copy of every ballot cast so a voter may inspect it before it is rolled into a spool to be included with the final vote record on Election Day.

The new machines will also be protected from hackers because they are not connected to the Internet, a phone line, or between precincts.

In order to ensure integrity and voter confidence in elections, all counties must implement voting systems and procedures that are secure, accurate, accessible, and are able to allow for recounts. The plan to purchase the new voting machines will meet these needs.