Replacing voting machines will be costly without state aid
  
  
 By John Nickerson
Staff Writer

Published October 7 2005

NORWALK Without state funding, it could cost Norwalk at least $280,000 to replace its lever-operated voting machines, city and state officials said.

The secretary of the state and registrars across Connecticut are struggling to figure out how to replace the machines that were prohibited by a federal commission. The panel ruled last month that all lever-operated voting machines had to be changed to accommodate handicapped and non-English-speaking voters.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has asked the federal Justice Department to clarify the ruling by the Election Assistance Commission, which advises states on how to comply with the 2002 Help America Vote Act.

Norwalk Registrars of Voters Karen Doyle Lyons and Betty Bondi said the cost of replacing the city's 68 machines by the first election next year will be significant without state help.

A $33 million federal grant will be used to provide voting machines throughout the state. But state and local officials aren't sure that grant will cover replacing the state's 3,300 lever-style machines.

Before the federal panel's ruling, Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz began looking into buying 771 machines. It would put a machine in each of the state's 769 polling places capable of providing a private ballot opportunity for voters with handicaps.

With a new machine in each of Norwalk's 14 polling places, that still leaves 54 that would need to be replaced.

The state does not yet know how it will cost to buy the 771 machines, said Michael Kozik, managing attorney of the Legislation and Elections Administration Division of the Secretary of the State's office. Bids will be opened next month.

Whatever money is left over will be used to help municipalities defray the cost of replacing the rest of their lever-style machines, he said.

"We don't know how many of those we can afford," Kozik said.

He said municipalities will have two choices in replacement machines.

The first can be set up much like an automated teller machine with touch-screen ballot choices. The second uses optical-scan technology and can read paper ballots filled in by a voter much like a multiple-choice test is graded in schools.

Both machines cost about $10,000 each. If the city chooses the touch-screen model, it would have to replace each lever machine. But the city could buy about half as many scan models because they are faster and easier to use.

If the city were to buy touch-screen machines, it could replace its 54 remaining lever-style machines with 54 touch screens, Kozik said.

If Norwalk chose optical-scan machines, the city would only need to purchase 28 two for each polling place, Kozik said.

Lyons said she will be sad to retire the city's lever machines, some of which date to the 1940s and 1950s.

But Lyons and Bondi said it makes sense to use federal money to buy the optical-scan machines.

"It would seem prudent that we would go with the optical scanners rather than the (ATM-style) machines," Lyons said

Bondi agreed. "I favor the optical scanner. It is simple and less expensive," she said.