September 21, 2005

"Some counties still holding out for paper ballots"

"Volusia County on Florida's east coast and Leon County -- Tallahassee -- may temporarily violate federal and state deadlines for the purchase of electronic voting machines that meet disabled access guidelines until certified new equipment that provides paper ballots for manual recounts becomes available.

Sarasota County spent $4.7 million to meet its disabled access obligations in 2001 with the purchase of 1,615 Elections Systems and Software iVoltronic touch-screen machines that don't provide paper ballots for manual recounts.

June 23, the Omaha, Neb., company announced it has been cleared by federal elections authorities to sell a new product called the AutoMARK, an electronic voting machine that scans ballots and accommodates all voters, including the disabled and visually impaired.

Unlike the touch-screen iVoltronic machines, which do not provide a paper ballot for manual recounts, the AutoMARK machine optically scans ballots in a way that provides the privacy, accessibility and paper verification many voters' organizations have called for.

While Florida elections officials have not certified the new ES&S AutoMARK machines, counties that held out on new equipment purchases because they want ballot paper trails that can confirm computer results will push to have them cleared.

Inexplicably, the only state-certified touch-screen machines that currently meet disabled accessible standards are the ES&S iVoltronic machines, which Miami-Dade County has threatened to scrap because of operational problems and the absence of a paper ballot."

You read the rest of the story here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at September 21, 2005 05:05 PM