Ballot printer provides insight

Monday, June 19, 2006 10:47 AM CDT

ES&S blamed for voting problems

By Warren Watkins

The Daily Citizen

While debates and discussions about the state-wide debacle of this year?s elections continue, not many White County residents realize a small print shop in southern White County has printed millions of ballots for Arkansas elections since 1988.

Jim Pinner, owner and manager of Jim Harris and Associates, has valuable insight into the election process. He produces printed items of all types from a non-descript building without a sign on Hwy. 267 south of Searcy, and while he prints no ballots for White County, a significant number of the larger counties in Arkansas turn to Pinner for their paper ballots.

White County has been spared the worst of the mistakes, but some, Lonoke County for example, were not able to complete their vote count until the day after the primary election.

The advent of the electronic voting has not put the paper ballot printing companies out of business because not all counties have gone all-electronic yet, and because absentee voters must still use the old-fashioned forms.

Pinner?s attention was drawn to an article in the Daily Citizen, in which White County Election Commissioner John Nunnally made comments about printing ballots.

?Mr. Nunnally made a comment about needing more printers to print ballots for the Electronic Systems and Software (ES&S) system,? Pinner said. ?That?s easily said but not easily done, because there?s more to it than putting ink on paper.?

The system is so twisted that not all printers can make the grade. Five printers who printed ballots for the primary will not print ballots for the runoff because they performed poorly.

?There was a lot of conflicting information,? Debbie Pinner, his wife who works at the business as well, said.

Ballot blanks are shipped to printers with tiny black squares, already printed in strategic locations so they can be read by machines. The printers then run the proper blanks through their presses, placing actual names where they will appear at the right precinct at the right time.

?The whole technology for printing ballots changed,? Jim said, referring to the advent of the electronic machines. ?We had to transfer everything we were doing to the new technology.?

The critical issue is that printers must work with the programmers, something that has not happened in this year?s elections, Debbie said.

?In some counties, the printer made good ballots that could not be matched up with the iVos [iVotronic electronic voting machines],? Debbie said.

The company printed ballots for Washington County, and were given two different reports from officials, reports containing information that had to be properly integrated.

?There were times we were just sitting here waiting, knowing we had 15 counties to print for, until they sent the .jpg files of the ballot,? Debbie said.

The Pinners and their press crew printed ballots for 29 counties for this year?s primary.

?No one really visualized what would happen,? Jim said.

Ballots could not be typeset by the printers, as before, because all the typesetting was done by ES&S. In the old method, a ?proof? was printed and sent to the county clerk, who made corrections and sent it back to the printer. Now, ES&S has control of the ballots until they are delivered to the county, an event that has happened at the last minute or even after deadlines have passed.

?The three-day turnaround in the primary for early runoff voting was humanly impossible because of the Memorial Day weekend, right after election day,? Jim said. ?The polling books had to be returned.?

Jim said he and his crew were ready to work all of the holiday weekend, but ES&S workers said they were not.

?ES&S must take total responsibility for early voting not starting on time,? Jim said.

Last year, Pinner saw trouble brewing and tried to head off a crisis.

?I went to Secretary of State Charlie Daniels, and told him, ?Charlie, you?d better get some of the dates changed or we?re going to have chaos.? He went to the legislature and it didn?t get out of committee,? Pinner said.

Jim said ES&S was programming the Personal Election Ballots (PEBs) at the same time they were sending printers the .pdf files.

?Phillips County had one hell of a mess,? Jim said. ?Somebody that was programming the PEBs flat screwed up.?

Jim Harris and Associates is a contract printer for ES&S, and Jim Pinner also works for some counties on election day, running voting machines.

Concerning changes that need to be made before the November general election, Jim pointed at the change in deadlines as a critical need.

?The laws are going to have to be changed or we?re going to have this from now on,? Jim said.