Chickasaw supervisors oppose voting machines, take no action

8/2/2005 1:16:19 AM
Daily Journal

Daily Journal reports

HOUSTON - Chickasaw County supervisors say they do not like the voting machines proposed by Secretary of State Eric Clark but feel like they have no choice but to sign up for them.

They took no action on the plan Monday.

"If we opt in, it will be at no cost to the county," said Supervisor Jerry Hall. "If we opt out, it could cost us $200,000. ? There was a lot of concern from day one. We didn't like the way it was forced on us by the Secretary of State."

To comply with the a new federal voting act, counties have until 2006 to use approved voting equipment. Clark's office is offering to pay for touch-screen Diebold machines, which Clark is advocating statewide. An Aug., 15 deadline faces counties on signing up for the free machines.

County resident Mamie Cunningham said she opposed the Diebold machines because they leave no paper trail, and other states had had problems with them. She said the local NAACP could file a complaint against the state, trying to force it to give the same funding for other brands of voting machines.