Touch screen voting machines hold lead

Six commissioners tilt toward buying the machines, but the other likes the less expensive optical scan devices.

By LISA GREENE

© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 23, 2001

Pinellas County commissioners continued to ask questions Monday about the cost and safety of electronic voting machines, but six commissioners say they are leaning toward buying touch screen machines.

The seventh, Commissioner Ken Welch, wants less expensive optical scan machines and sharply criticized a citizens' committee that unanimously recommended the touch screens, which cost millions more and are newer.

Meanwhile, county lawyers drafted stricter rules Monday to ban lobbying by prospective contractors after one company, Election Systems & Software, wrote a letter praising its system to the St. Petersburg Times and sent a copy to each county commissioner. The new rules will forbid such contact with commissioners.

At a workshop meeting Monday, the two leading touch screen vendors, ES&S and Sequoia Voting Systems, demonstrated machines for commissioners. Commissioners also saw two optical scanners.

Voters touch the screen of the electronic machines, and the computer records their vote. Optical scanners read paper ballots filled out by voters and cost about $3-million.

Sequoia's system would cost the county $15.5-million. The citizens' committee recommended it over ES&S system, which would cost $12.6-million.

But Welch said the committee was too quick to dismiss the less expensive scanners and didn't pay enough attention to studies about optical scanners' accuracy. Some studies have said scanners based in the precinct, which is what Pinellas would have, are far more accurate than counting ballots in a central location.

"I don't think we really gave a fair shake to optical scan," Welch said.

But County Judge Patrick Caddell, chairman of the citizens' committee, and Deborah Clark, elections supervisor, both said that those studies were flawed and that touch screens are as accurate or more accurate than the precinct scanners.

"In terms of accuracy, we could sit here forever and play with statistics," said Caddell, who went on to refer to "the statistics fairy."

Welch also repeated his concern that the machines might record votes incorrectly and that there would be no independent "paper trail" showing how votes were cast.

But Commissioner Susan Latvala pointed out that touch screens review the choices each voter made before that person casts a ballot.

"You get a visual opportunity to verify your ballot," she said. "That's more than we have today."

And Muslim Gadiwalla, a committee member and chief information officer for the city of St. Petersburg, told commissioners that testing safeguards make the systems hard to tamper with.

Under the county's purchasing rules, companies are "strictly prohibited" from lobbying commissioners, and their proposals may be thrown out if they do. An ES&S official and most commissioners said they didn't view the Times letter as illegal lobbying.

But three other commissioners and Caddell said the letter, while it might not violate the county's rules, was inappropriate.

"If they had problems with what the commission received, they had the opportunity to respond to that today," said Commissioner Karen Seel. "That was the proper place and time."

County Attorney Susan Churuti said the county's new rules will specify that written or verbal contact, whether direct or indirect, is not allowed.

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