COUNTY TO FOOT BILL FOR VOTING MACHINE SWITCH

Mike McCagg

ccSCOOP News

01-05-10 – 6:30 a.m. - The state’s mandate to do away with lever voting machines will cost the county significantly. A study provided to ccSCOOP by Democratic Election Commissioner of Elections Virginia Martin shows that the county could have to spend as much as $300,000 on the switch—funds which have largely not been budgeted. ”This is going to cost counties dearly,” Martin said.

Just one cost—acquiring a permit for the electronic management system that is part of the new scanners the county will use—will cost Columbia County taxpayers $78,000. In addition, the paper ballots for the machines are expected to cost $40,000--$15,000 more than paper ballots cost last year. Combined, the county is looking at a $93,000 increase in cost on just those two line items, which, according to Martin, “doesn’t even begin to cover the costs [of the switch]."

“What is really going to kill the counties is the cost of providing the security and the cost of storing securely all of the paper,” Martin said. The lever machines, which are virtually tamper proof, are now left at the individual polling places, but for the new machines the county will have to find a secure storage place at each of the polling places or hire people to deliver and secure the machines hours before the polls open each Election Day. There will also be additional labor costs if the ballot count must be verified on Election Day, which may be the case. The county had originally budgeted $40,000 for the paper ballots, Martin explained, but the line item was reduced back to the current year’s expenses by the Board of Supervisors. Neither the permit fees nor the anticipated costs of labor are in the budget.

The study done by votersunite.org, which estimated the $300,000 first year cost for the electronic balloting, found that recurring annual costs for New York counties could be as high as $150,000 or more above the current cost of conducting elections with levers supplemented by accessible Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs).

In Maryland, which switched to touch screen voting machines ten years ago, county costs jumped an average of 179 percent per voter, even though the state now pays half the cost of the voting equipment, according to saveourvotes.org.

Martin, Republican Commissioner of Elections Don Kline, and the Columbia County Board of Supervisors mounted an effort to keep the lever machines and block state attempts to force a switch to the optical scanning devices. County officials, along with groups across the country, say the optical scanning devices are more costly to use and maintain and are more likely to result in a fraudulent or error-ridden vote count.

“The lever machines are difficult to hack into, make it difficult to throw an election, and provide a paper trail,” Martin told ccSCOOP previously. "With the optical scan devices, it tabulates the vote results for you. Essentially, it counts it in secret, and we don't know how it is counting or what is counting. We don't know if the computer is programmed correctly, or if it was subject to a viral attack."

Dozens of reports from computer scientists corroborate that optical scan software can be undetectably manipulated to create false election reports which would not be recognized by election officials or the public. An audit will be mandated by state law, but many feel that detecting fraud or error would require a more carefully designed audit than the one being suggested by the state, and such an audit would be both expensive and labor intensive.

Still, on December 15, the New York State Board of Elections approved the use of electronic voting machines beginning with the 2010 elections. The decision was made eight years after Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, encouraging states to modernize voting and requiring that states make voting accessible to people with disabilities. New York is the last state to comply with HAVA, only doing so after legal action and a court order to do so.