KC election board s Diebold system

By DAVE HELLING    The Kansas City Star    08 December 2005

The Kansas City Election Board has chosen Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems to provide hundreds of new touch-screen and optical scan voting machines for city voters in 2006.

All four board members endorsed the ion Thursday, despite what they all said were problems with Diebold?s ?image.? For months, election activists, in Kansas City and around the nation, have criticized the company, claiming its election software could be corrupted and votes altered, either by outsiders or by election workers and candidates.

?All you have to do is do a search on the Internet and you can see all these allegations,? said board member Joe Serrano. ?What will happen if we buy this system and there are problems??

Diebold has long denied the accusations. ?Our machines are extremely safe, secure, and accurate,? said David Bear, speaking for the company. ?We?re very happy and excited to be bringing this technology to the voters in Kansas City.?

Members of the board said Thursday that cost was a primary consideration in the final choice.

The federal government is giving the board $2 million to upgrade its voting machines. The Diebold proposal added another $35,000 to that amount, which local taxpayers must provide. By contrast, the other system under final consideration, sold by California-based Sequoia Voting Systems, would have cost local taxpayers an additional $252,000, a price gap board members said was too big to ignore.

Diebold has also faced intense criticism from some election observers who have criticized campaign donations from the president of the company to the Republican Party and President Bush. Ray James, the election board?s Republican director, said no election ?professionals? had voiced concerns about Diebold?s performance

Diebold hired former Democratic Party operative Woody Overton to represent it at Thursday?s discussion. He told the board that other area counties use the company?s election equipment and could vouch for its reliability. Steve Glorioso, another longtime Democratic political consultant, made the same point on behalf of the mayor?s office.

?They?re already using Diebold in Clay and Platte counties,? he told the board. ?You?ve got five city council members from that area who vote with Diebold and like it. They would need a very compelling explanation as to why you would pick another company with their cost so much higher.?

Election directors James and Sharon Turner Buie, a Democrat, also recommended Diebold, and the company received the highest marks in an informal staff survey of preferences for the contract. Five firms originally submitted proposals.

The board must still approve a final contract with Diebold, and the Kansas City Council and Jackson County Legislature must consider the purchase and approve spending the local money for it.

Like thousands of other cities and counties across the country, Kansas City is buying new election equipment in part to satisfy federal law, which requires election authorities to provide at least one machine at every polling place that is fully accessible to the disabled. For most jurisdictions, including Kansas City, that machine will be a touch-screen voting booth, similar to an ATM.

But the $2 million dollar grant also includes funding to replace antiquated punch-card voting systems, like the one Kansas Citians in Jackson County have used for 30 years. The board wants to use that money to buy Diebold?s companion optical scan system, an older technology in which voters darken circles on a ballot near a candidate?s name. Those circles are then read by a computer.

The board had considered purchasing an all-touch-screen system, but the local cost $5 million to $6 million ? was considered prohibitive. Instead, the Diebold proposal is a ?blended? system of touch-screens and optical scan units.

Both touch-screen and optical scan systems provide a paper record of the vote, which Missouri requires.

Early hope that Kansas City and Jackson County might agree on a voting system has faded. The Jackson County Election Board, which oversees voting outside of Kansas City, has recommended a different machine made by Election Systems and Software of Omaha.

Both the city and the county want to install the machines in time for the primary election next August.