County OKs $8M for electronic voting machines
 Asbury Park Press 09/11/05
BY NINA RIZZO
FREEHOLD BUREAU

    
FREEHOLD ? The Monmouth County Board of Freeholders agreed last week to spend more than $8 million to purchase new touch-screen voting machines in order to comply with a federal law mandating the use of electronic voting machines by 2006.

The county was obligated under the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 to replace its familiar lever machines with modern electronic ones that resemble automated teller machines.

The act was designed to improve the nation's election system after the 2000 presidential stalemate. It also created minimum election administration standards and provided $3.9 billion in funding for the replacement of punch card and lever machines.

"There was absolutely nothing wrong with the lever machines but we have to comply with the (law)," John Bradshaw, the county's superintendent of elections, said Friday.

On Thursday, the freeholders awarded the contract, worth $8,078,970, to Sequoia Voting Systems Inc. to supply 950 touch-screen machines to be used throughout the county. Sequoia is one of only five companies that produce state-certified models.

Bradshaw recommended Sequoia because its models have been purchased by 15 other New Jersey counties, including Mercer, and he has monitored their progress in this state for more than two years.

"We chose Sequoia's AVC Advantage for its track record throughout New Jersey, its voter-friendly design and the company's outstanding technical and customer service," Mercer County Clerk Cathy DiCostanzo said in a 2003 press release. "We are looking forward to providing our voters with the increased simplicity, accuracy and accessibility that Sequoia's electronic voting technology offers."

Monmouth County will receive a 75 percent reimbursement for the cost of the new machines and related equipment and software.

The machines, which electronically record a vote but leave no paper trail, are expected to be delivered by the end of the year and ready for use in the 2006 elections.

The machines, however, will be retrofitted so that a paper receipt is kept inside each machine after every vote is cast. The state mandates that voting machines produce paper records by 2008.

Bradshaw said his office will hold informational meetings throughout the county to introduce the new machines to voters. He anticipates the old machines will be donated to schools to be used in school elections and civics classes.

The superintendent does not believe the new machines will have an impact on voter turnout or make the process any easier or harder. What it accomplishes, he said, is taking a technology that has worked for the past 50 years and making it obsolete.

Florida, the source of the 2000 election controversy that the U.S. Supreme Court had to resolve, no longer uses punch cards.