Voting reform pushing out county's punch-card ballots

A federal law using an incentive program intended to make voting less confusing and more precise will most likely come at a cost of about $87,000 to Cape Girardeau County.

County Clerk Rodney Miller estimates that's how much it will cost the county to eliminate its punch-card ballot system. The Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, does not require that counties eliminate the punch cards, but it does provide incentives, about $3,200 per precinct, to do away with them by 2006.

HAVA does, however, mandate that all voting systems alert voters if they voted for more than one candidate in one particular race. Currently, there is no such technology available for punch cards.

In effect, because punch cards do not meet the "no fault" voting requirement, the federal government is forcing counties that use punch cards to change their voting system.

If counties decide to keep the punch-card system, they run the risk of having to pay for the entire system on their own. In Cape Girardeau's case, that would be about $200,000. The county's overall annual budget is $10.5 million.

The county currently has no plans on how to pay for the change. The commissioners will schedule a long-range planning retreat some time this month and will address this topic then.

"It's one of those things that's going to be very expensive and it's being mandated by the federal government, but they're not making much effort to send money down to pay for it," said Gerald Jones, Cape Girardeau County's presiding commissioner. "The question has to be raised, 'How much can they mandate if they're not going to pay for it?'"

The state has already received a two-year extension on a 2004 deadline because it has budgeted $1.2 million of its federal disbursements to educate voters on how to use the punch cards during the next two years.

County consistency

Miller says that time has proven the current punch-card system accurate. The punch-card system was introduced to the county in 1980. Since then, there have been three recounts. Each time, the results came back the same as the original tally.

Congress passed the voting reform law in October 2002 after the hanging chad controversy in Florida's 2000 presidential election.

Miller's view is that if a system is not broken, then it doesn't need to be fixed. He said he believes voters should have some accountability in being able to vote correctly. And they've always been allowed, he said, to ask for a new ballot if they think they have made a mistake.

Regardless of that philosophy, the reality is that the election process must change, according to the federal government.

The federal government has authorized $1.5 billion to go to the election reform.

Miller said federal money will account for "only a drop" of the costs it will take for counties to introduce a new balloting system.

HAVA mandates several requirements, but two of them are particularly significant: the "no fault" provision and the provision for disabled voters.

The county faces two options in meeting these requirements.

First, there is the Optical Scan method, which is already being used by many Missouri counties, including Scott and Bollinger. Voters fill in ovals, much like a standardized school test. If the machine detects that the voter "over voted," the machine spits the ballot back out.

The second consideration is to go with a touch-screen computer ballot.

In order to meet disability requirements, all precincts must have at least one of these touch screens, called Direct Recording Equipment, or DRE, which will include Braille and microphones, but also be available for anyone to use. The state will hand down federal funding for the required DRE for each precinct.

The touch-screen technology covers both major requirements, but Miller estimates a local cost of about $1.2 million to pay for an all-DRE system.

That isn't economically feasible, Miller said.

The same can be said for Perry County, one of the other 36 counties that still use punch cards. Nine counties still count votes manually.

Cape Girardeau will probably end up with a dual system of Optical Scan and touch-screen DRE. That means the county will have to count two different types of ballots. There will be an estimated up-front cost of around $87,000, plus the cost of storing and maintaining about 70 machines.

bmiller@semissourian.com

243-6635