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Board considers voting machine options

Third company presents choice to Peoria commissioners

Thursday, November 17, 2005

By MOLLY PARKER   Peoria Journal Star
PEORIA - The Peoria Board of Election Commissioners held a special meeting Wednesday to consider purchasing new electronic voting machines, but has yet to make a decision.

After recently hearing presentations from two companies hoping to snag the city's business, the board brought in yet a third company to hear its proposal for electronic voting machines.

New voting machines that allow the disabled to vote without assistance are a requirement of the 2002 Help America Vote Act and must be in place by January. The commission has until Dec. 31 to sign a contract in order to obtain federal grant money to cover the cost of the machines.

The company that presented its product to the board Wednesday is Election Systems and Software, the same company the city bought its current optical scan ballot system from in 1993. The proposal the board considered was to only buy one electronic machine for the disabled that would work with the same ballots that are currently used. Everyone else would continue to vote as they have for more than a decade.

The commissioners considered buying electronic voting machines for all voters from the other companies.

The board could also purchase from Election Systems a machine that would allow ballots to be counted in the precincts, rather than the current practice of counting the ballots centrally.

The problem is that the counters are not equipped to handle the city's unique style of cumulative voting used to elect at-large council members. That wouldn't be needed until January 2007, but company account manager Patrick Whalen said it's unclear whether that could be in place and certified by then.

"I'd love to say we'd have the cumulative voting ready, but I seriously doubt it," Whalen said.

The city's other option is to continue to count the votes centrally at the commission's Downtown office, though it's also unclear whether the tabulator meets the federal government's "error rate."

Whalen said he plans to ask the director for a ruling on the in-house tabulator at Monday's Springfield meeting of the Illinois State Board of Elections.

The other two companies being considered by the board are Populex Corp., a new company run by a relative of one of the commissioners, and Hart InterCivic, with which the Peoria County Clerk's Office is currently negotiating. The board meets again at 4 p.m. Dec. 1.



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