|
New touch-screen voting machines on the way
Last September, the Mitchell County Board of Supervisors approved the purchase of 30 new touch-screen voting machines from the Diebold company at cost of $131,000.
The machines, which are about the size of a suitcase, are expected to arrive at the Mitchell County Courthouse sometime next week. According to County Auditor Lowell Tesch, the touch-screens will be used for the first time in the 2006 June Primary Election.
Mandated by the federal government's Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002, the touch-screen machines are intended to make voting more accessible to citizens and strengthen voting security.
As a required replacement of the old punch card system, the new touch-screen machines, partially paid for through HAVA funds ($90,000 in Mitchell County's case), were supposed to be in place in December of last year.
Now already four months overdue, at least one Mitchell County Supervisor is vocally criticizing the handling of the implementation and certification of the new voting machines.
"HAVA, the Help America Vote Act, stated new voting machines were to be in all county possessions by the 20th of December last year," said Mitchell County Supervisor Stan Walk. "Many counties still do not have these machines."
The Diebold contract approved by county supervisors actually replaced a previous contract of $127,000 from MicroVote.
MicroVote's system was less expensive than the Diebold system, but because of federal mandates and timelines, supervisors were forced to proceed with the alternative contract.
"Secretary of State Chet Culver would only certify two companies for selling the voting machines, costing counties lots of money because they could not purchase better machines for less monies since Chet would not certify them," Walk stated. "Yet, Chet's pet companies are failing to deliver the machines in a timely manner."
Walk said MicroVote's paperless machines were smaller, easy to store and use. Worth County Auditor Kay Clark said MicroVote's price also included training, something that was not offered by others.
Still, only two vendors - ES &S and Diebold - were able to meet certification requirements under the timeframe required by the federal government.
Walk said he is disappointed. "Despite the tight timeframe that forced many supervisors into approving a second contract, the machines are four months behind schedule," he noted. He also criticized the use of federal money that was granted to Iowa to implement the HAVA act.
"Voting discs do not seem to be produced as promised also, yet of the $31 million dollars the federal government gave Iowa for the voting machines, Chet kept over $14.5 million of this money for his office," said Walk.
Despite Walk's vocal frustration, Tesch said the machines will be in place for the June Primary Election, and that he has been keeping in contact with the state and the company that makes the new voting machines concerning their safe arrival.
"Some of the parts for the machines have already arrived, and the machines themselves are supposed to be shipped out by April 20," said Tesch. "They should be easy to use and are about 22 to 25 pounds in weight. Therefore they should be light and easily transportable to all the county precincts.
Tesch said that the current voting machines will have to be "decertified." Once decertified, the machines can no longer be legally used. Some training on how to use the new touch-screen voting devices will be required, and a certain amount of testing will also take place before the election in June.
Story created Apr 18, 2006 - 12:59:20 CDT.
|
