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County Takes Steps Towards Modernized Voting Systems
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County Takes Steps Towards Modernized Voting Systems
$2.3 Million Contract Approved for Electronic Voting Machines
By Michael Thomas
If you go to one of a handful of selected polling locales in Santa Cruz County to cast a vote in the June 6 primary election, you may see something new â€" an electronic voting machine. The County of Monterey is loaning 12 machines built by Sequoia Voting Systems to be used in an initial deployment in Santa Cruz County.
By the November election, there will be one in each of the County’s approximately 160 polling places and the old Mark-A-Vote system will be replaced by an optical scan system, the result of a $2.3 million purchase agreement approved by the Board of Supervisors on Mar. 28.
The Help America Vote Act had set a Jan. 1 deadline for counties to deploy new voting systems, aimed largely at serving disabled voters. Like most California counties, Santa Cruz missed the deadline as the result of delays in State certification for new voting systems.
“It was a very careful and tedious process to make sure that any system that’s used … is secure,” explained County Clerk Gail Pellerin. “It took longer than anyone thought it would.”
The County has approximately $3.5 million from both the Federal Act and California’s voting modernization act, Proposition 41, to set up the new system. In addition to the $2.3 million Sequoia contract, funds will be spent training poll workers and educating the public about the new system.
Coming Soon to Your Polling Place
The recently approved contract includes 165 electronic voting machines, but with delivery time estimated at four months, they won’t be available for the June primary.
“Unfortunately, there’s not a large supply of this voting equipment sitting there ready to be deployed,” Pellerin explained.
The County of Monterey was able to loan 12 machines to Santa Cruz because it has already converted its entire voting system to touch screen machines. Monterey was under a Federal mandate to do a complete conversion because they are classified as a bilingual county, Pellerin explained.
On June 6, two of the dozen machines will be used at the County Clerks office and the Watsonville City Clerks office. The remaining ten will be at key polling places countywide.
The machines will make it easier for disabled voters to cast their ballots in a secure and private way. For the visually impaired, headsets connected to the electronic machines will “read” the ballot information. The voter will then mark votes by pressing buttons of different shapes on a handheld controller.
The headset system will also be available for voters who are dyslexic or illiterate.
“There are a lot of bells and whistles,” Pellerin said.
One feature is almost literally a whistle. For voters who are paralyzed or do not have the motor control necessary to press buttons, there is a “sip and puff” device. It marks vote responses when the user blows or sucks from a special mouthpiece.
For November, Entire System Will Change
By the next election in November, the County’s entire voting system will be overhauled. The stacks of Mark-A-Vote cards that we are used to will be replaced by an optical scan card. The card is printed on the front and back with all the contests included on one piece of paper.
The County will also be able to print its own ballots, allowing more flexibility for changes, such as when a candidate is disqualified or withdraws from a race in the late stages of planning.
Perhaps the biggest change will be the installation of optical scanners at each polling place. Instead of having voters drop ballot cards in a plastic box, poll workers will send them through the scanner to be checked immediately for errors.
“If they have over-voted [checked more than the allowed number of candidates in a given race,] the ballot will be rejected and the voter will have the option to correct it,” Pellerin explained.
The new equipment meets the “second-chance voting” requirement of HAVA.
On election night, precincts will send their votes to the County Clerk’s office on an electronic cartridge, rather than as boxes of untabulated cards. That means Pellerin may be able to release preliminary results of local contests a little bit earlier.
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