Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

Politics

Pinellas picks voting device vendor

ES&S has the nod for $6-million in optical scan machines to replace touch screens.

By WILL VANT ZANT, Times Staff Writer
Published November 22, 2007

In May, Gov. Charlie Crist signed a law jettisoning touch screen voting in the state and requiring all Florida elections to be conducted with optical scan equipment after July 2008.
	[Zach Boyden- Holmes | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [James Borchuck | Times] This is an optical scan voting machine made by Sequoia Voting Systems that is similar to a model that Election Systems & Software will provide.

Pinellas County is one step closer to replacing its touch screen voting machines with the state-mandated optical scan models.

An advisory panel has selected Election Systems & Software to provide the optical scan machines to the county.

The County Commission will vote Tuesday on whether to approve the deal. But with ES&S the preferred vendor of both the panel and the Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections Office, the vote is largely a formality.

ES&S will be paid a little more than $6-million for 400 optical scan machines and 400 machines designed for use by the disabled. The federal government will cover nearly $2.2-million of the cost, and the county will pay the rest.

After the 2000 election debacle in Florida, the county spent nearly $13-million to replace punch cards with touch screen voting machines. The technology quickly became a target of voting integrity activists because the machines did not generate a paper trail.

In May, Gov. Charlie Crist signed a law jettisoning touch screen voting in the state and requiring all Florida elections to be conducted with optical scan equipment after July 2008.

Pinellas is one of 15 counties that must replace the bulk of their voting machines to be compliant.

To use the optical scanning machines, Pinellas voters will use pens or pencils to mark paper ballots in a private booth. They'll then take those ballots and insert them in scanners, which resemble fax machines.

The scanners read the ballot. If a voter has marked too many candidates or left a space blank, a message board on the scanner will alert the voter, allowing the ballot to be amended.

The ballots are collected in the bellies of the machines, meaning there is a paper record of each vote cast.

Pamela Haengel, president of the Voting Integrity Alliance of Tampa Bay and vice president of the Florida Voters Coalition, said improved auditing of elections is still needed in Florida, but the optical scan equipment is a significant improvement.

"It's absolutely the direction we have to go," Haengel said. "To have verifiable elections, you have to have a record of the election that is independent of machine software."

Nancy Whitlock, a spokeswoman for the Pinellas elections office, said the optical scan equipment will get a test run in a single voting precinct during municipal elections March 11.

The equipment will get its countywide debut Aug. 26, when the nonpresidential primary will be held.

The seven-member advisory panel unanimously chose ES&S over Premier Election Solutions, formerly Diebold Election Systems.

County Judge Patrick Caddell, a panel member and a veteran of Pinellas' canvassing board, said both systems used similar technology, so the difference was largely in the packaging. The ES&S system seemed more voter-friendly, Caddell said, with the scanner boasting a bigger screen to alert voters to potential problems with their ballots.

"It just seemed easier to read and understand and have less risk of poll worker involvement," Caddell said.

The Florida Department of State is responsible for the disposal of Pinellas' touch screen equipment, which was provided by Sequoia Voting Systems. A department spokesman said Wednesday the agency plans to recycle the Sequoia equipment, but details won't be known until after Jan. 1.

Will Van Sant can be reached at 727 445-4166 or vansant@sptimes.com.

[Last modified November 21, 2007, 22:45:19]