March 16, 2006

"Alameda County ready to shop for new voting machine system"

"Four years after buying new Diebold voting machines for $12 million, Alameda County is headed back into the market to negotiate for up to $17.8 million of new voting machines.

With an impassioned debate spanning two days, county supervisors anguished over sagging public confidence in voting and uncertainty in the technology, then found themselves divided over how to handle elections for coming years.

"This is not the purchasing of a new vehicle fleet," said Board president Keith Carson, "this is fundamental to all the rights of every citizen in the county."

"There's too many unknown things," said Supervisor Gail Steele. "This $17 million is a huge amount of money with the uncertainty that we have."

But when the county's elections chief warned that delays could trigger new federal requirements and force the county into filling its polling places with more electronic voting equipment, Alice Lai-Bitker joined supervisors Nate Miley and Scott Haggerty in pressing ahead with the purchase negotiations.

County elections and contracts officials will negotiate with Allen, Texas-based Diebold Election Systems Inc. and Oakland-based Sequoia Voting Systems, the two voting-machine makers rated highest by a panel of voting advocates, residents and county officials.

The winning company would provide a system that principally handles paper ballots with optical ballot scanners plus two ATM-like touch-screen voting machines in each polling place like those the county uses now, the latter to meet federal mandates for handicapped-accessible voting equipment. The touch-screens would print a backup record of the electronic ballot for voters to check and elections workers to use in recounts.

The decision marks a turning point for Alameda County and a noteworthy moment in the national debate over voting technology. Federal voting-reform law passed after the 2000 election debacle requires all counties to buy accessible voting equipment, and the machines that easily accommodate the broadest array of disabled voters are computerized.

Yet the migration to fully computerized voting, fueled with billions in federal grant dollars, has collided with concern over vote manipulation and computer breakdowns.

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Posted by Randy Riddle at March 16, 2006 09:44 AM