New ballot counters in place for election
By Dan Linehan
The Free Press
MANKATO ?     12 December 2005

January?s special mayoral election will likely afford county officials the chance to test out new ballot counters ? as well as give local voters their first-ever chance to re-write an erroneous vote.

Patty O? Connor, Blue Earth County director of taxpayer services, said she?s confident that the new counters will be available by Jan. 31, when Mankato voters will choose a new mayor.

Currently, voters place their ballots into boxes that are carried to a central location and tallied by machine. But improperly-marked ballots are unusable when they?re taken away from the person who can correct the mistake.

The new counters will allow voters to re-consider their ballot if they too many or too few candidates.

Nicollet County Auditor Bob Bruns doesn?t anticipate a whole lot of saved ballots.

But, during a presidential election with about 16,000 Nicollet County voters, Bruns said about 100 or 200 people tend to overvote.

O? Connor said she hopes that grants will cover all the new counters. The county could be forced to pay about $127,000 if not all the grant money comes through ? the ?worst case scenario,? O? Connor said.

The county had to get a bit creative to fund the new counters.

The federal government is paying the county about $381,000 to fund new, separate, equipment for disabled voters under the Help America Vote Act of 2002.

O? Connor says some precincts have been merged and others have been converted to all-mail voting, which is cheaper. That means the county will receive more money for HAVA than it needs, and the balance will help purchase precinct counters.

Other money, about $132,000, will come from state grants for which the county is competing. But O? Connor said the county is qualified for those funds.

Those assistive voting machines will, for the first time, allow people with disabilities the chance to vote on their own.

?They, finally, will be able to vote and no one will know how they did it,? O? Connor said.

But those machines won?t be available in time for January?s special election, even though HAVA mandates that they be ready by Jan. 1, 2006.

O? Connor said the county will definitely have the assistive voting machines by September, adding that the federal government accepts the delay as long as local governments are moving forward.

The machines will be able to increase type size for voters who can?t see well. It also has a tube that quadriplegics can use to blow into to make their ions.

?You can vote with their feet,? O? Connor said.

She said that the special election was a surprise, but that county officials were looking forward to try out the new counters before Congressional elections later in the year.

?There?s a silver lining in every bump in the road.?

There will be a public hearing concerning the new election equipment at 10:30 a.m. during Tuesday?s Board of Commissioners meeting at the Blue Earth County Courthouse.