Registrar proposes buying new touch screen voting machines for primary

By: DAVE DOWNEY -   North County Times   07 January 2006

Riverside County's elections chief Friday proposed buying a new set of touch-screen voting machines, in time for use in the June 6 primary. Riverside is a pioneer of sorts in the voting arena, having been the nation's first large county to trade in its paper ballots for electronic ones six years ago. In March 2000, the county purchased 4,250 electronic voting machines for $14 million, and those machines have been used in more than 30 elections.

In the years since, many other counties in California and around the country have jumped on the electronic-voting bandwagon. But along with the emerging technology's growing popularity has come increased scrutiny, and state lawmakers passed a law requiring California counties with electronic machines to provide a backup paper trail for all 2006 elections.

That has presented a challenge for Riverside County because the paper-trail device that was designed later for the county's older touch-screen model, Edge 1, has yet to be certified by federal and state agencies. And local elections are just around the corner.

Barbara Dunmore, county registrar of voters, said the county will fulfill the law's requirement for the Jan. 17 Riverside city election by borrowing some of San Bernardino County's touch screens. Those are of a later model, which has been certified.

Dunmore said Riverside County likely will borrow San Bernardino machines again for an April election in the wealthy Palm Springs-area city of Rancho Mirage.

However, the borrowing strategy won't work for the June primary, a statewide election that will require thousands of machines in Riverside County at the same time San Bernardino County uses thousands to count its own ballots.

Anticipating that upcoming major election, Riverside had been preparing to retrofit its 4,250 touch screens with paper-trail devices. Now, Dunmore is recommending abandoning that strategy.

With certification still a couple months away for Sequoia Voting Systems' VeriVote devices the ones designed for the type of touch screen Riverside County has and many weeks of lead time required for retrofitting the touch screens, Dunmore said the strategy no longer holds promise.

"There is no way we could get them ready in time for the June election," she said.

As an alternative, the county explored using all paper ballots in June or buying a set of newer-model electronic machines that come with a paper trail. Dunmore is recommending the latter.

She said the county negotiated a tentative deal with Sequoia for the purchase of 3,700 new Edge II touch screens for a net cost to county taxpayers of $4.8 million. That's less than the $6.5 million county supervisors set aside for a retrofit in this year's budget.

The paper-trail devices, located on the left side of the touch screens, would offer voters an opportunity to view paper printouts of their votes behind clear plastic screens before casting their electronic ballots with the press of a finger. Voters could not take printouts home with them, however. Rather, the paper records would be stored and consulted in a recount.

Dunmore said the price on the new machines is $14.2 million, but she said the cost to the county would be $4.8 million because it is eligible for $7.5 million in federal grants and Sequoia is offering to credit the county $1.9 million for trading in its existing touch screens.

Supervisor Bob Buster said he supports Dunmore's plan.

"We've got to get this done by the June primary," Buster said. "This looks to be the least net-cost option, with minimal opportunity for technical problems. This option gives us the ability to get, not a complete, but a substantial reimbursement from federal Help America Vote Act funds."

The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to take up the proposal Tuesday.

Dunmore said the new machines would have a useful life of 20 years.