Registrars’ Voting Machine Tryout Yields A Favorite

By John Voket

It may have cost Newtown’s registrars of voters another half-day out of the office, but they finally got to test three electronic voting machines contending for statewide use in 2006. And while details about the machines’ initial costs remained ellusive, it was easy for the local voting officials to determine on which among the trio of terminals it would be easiest to train volunteers and polling staffers.

While the jury is still out on which terminal will be chosen to replace several thousand mechanical machines that served Connecticut’s voters for more than a half-century, Newtown Registrars LeReine Frampton and Karen Aurelia say they favor a machine known as the Danaher Guardian 1242.

The respective registrars’ trips, Ms Frampton to a demonstration in Bridgeport last Thursday, and Ms Aurelia’s to a similar session in Southbury last Friday, were much more positive than the experience they shared earlier last week when they were all but ejected from a machine demonstration in Manchester.

As The Bee reported last week, following a so-called “training session” at the state capitol during which no training was provided, Ms Frampton and Ms Aurelia drove themselves on the directive of secretary of the state’s personnel to a mall in Manchester to conduct a demonstration of the three machines short-listed for possible statewide consideration.

As Ms Aurelia explained, upon arrival the Newtown officials were told they would have to wait approximately two hours in line to receive demonstrations. Facing a quick turnaround to get back to Newtown for an election recount, the registrars appealed to a secretary of the state’s office representative who relented to providing a quick look at the machines.

Upon entering the demonstration area, however, a representative from the UConn Department of Public Policy who was conducting voter surveys of the machines ordered the Newtown registrars to return to the back of the line or leave.

“Oh, I was pretty angry,” Ms Frampton said following the incident. “We wasted the whole day running around for nothing.”

Hands-On

Fortunately, a five-day tour of the machines to other locations including Bridgeport and Southbury later in the week eventually afforded the voting officials an opportunity to see what all the fuss was about. During those demonstrations, Ms Aurelia and Ms Frampton, along with hundreds of other voters and interested persons, watched and tried out the aforementioned Danaher unit, along with computerized machines from Diebold and Avante.

Following the demonstration, Ms Frampton pointed out numerous reasons why she though the Danaher was the unit to beat in the three-way competition for Connecticut’s voters, and voting officials. She noted that the Danaher unit not only most closely resembled the existing mechanical machines, it was the only one on which voters could view the entire full-face ballot at one time.

The Diebold and Avante units appeared to display their ballots in partial segments with voters scrolling or paging through each screen as one might do surfing a site on the Internet. And while the Danaher unit was immediately accessible to each new voter, as soon as the previous final vote was cast and verified, both the Diebold and Avante models required users insert an ATM-style voter verification card to activate each successive ballot.

“I didn’t like the fact that each voter needed a card to activate the machine,” Ms Frampton said. “I think the extra trouble to use [the ID card] will discourage people from using those machines, or create too much confusion.”

Ms Aurelia liked the fact that the machine was so similar to the current mechanical models in size and functionality that she felt it would be not only user-friendly for voters, but for volunteer and paid poll workers who would be on the front line when the new machines were rolled out next Election Day.

“Basically, I don’t think it would pose a challenge for our tenders and checkers,” Ms Aurelia said.

Moderators, however, would face a significant learning curve because they would be tallying votes from a printout, as opposed to reading vote counts off a mechanical counter, Ms Frampton added.

Possible Lower Costs

From a financial standpoint, Ms Frampton also appreciated that the Danaher machines would likely replace mechanical machines on a one-to-one basis, while preliminary reports indicate polling precincts would require a replacement ratio of two or three of the competing units to each of the recently retired mechanical models.

Ms Aurelia pointed out that if any trouble developed beyond what local voting mechanics were authorized to handle, the Connecticut-based Danaher Controls representatives would likely be able to respond quickly to service the breakdown.

“I would always prefer a machine supplied by the closest company in proximity to Newtown, or Connecticut,” she said. “I would expect they could respond within hours versus someone that has to jump on a plane, or drive from New Jersey or Pennsylvania to get here.”

According to Ms Frampton, she was told by representatives at the demonstration that the Avante machines had not been tested in any statewide applications, while the Diebold was used in several states, and that certain Danaher models had been used in hundreds of precincts going back almost 20 years.

While visiting the Southbury demonstration, Democratic Secretary of the State candidate Audrey Blondin confirmed that point of fact.

“The representative from Danaher said they had more than 13,000 of these units in 13 states including Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Kentucky,” Ms Blondin said.

‘Historic’ Demonstrations

Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz was also on hand in Southbury last Friday, wrapping up a week during which she said more than 500 voters per day had checked out the various terminals.

“This is really a historic event that the voters themselves will be helping us decide which machine we’ll make available to them beginning in 2006,” Ms Bysiewicz said.

Responding to several questions voiced by Newtown resident and Economic Development Commission Chairman Chet Hopper, including a concern about who would bear the ultimate cost for the new technology, Ms Bysiewicz pointed out that the state is providing 100 percent of the funding to replace 3,300 mechanical terminals across Connecticut.

The move to the new electronic technology is required as a stipulation of the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, which calls for every voting precinct in the United States to offer voting terminals fully accessible to anyone wishing to exercise their constitutional right to vote, including virtually all handicapped individuals. However, Ms Aurelia, whose husband is partially sighted and legally blind, said that in her opinion, none of the three machines would offer complete accessibility to virtually all handicapped individuals.

“The full face machine offered the most advantages, but none were really that helpful for the handicapped,” Ms Aurelia said. She noted that anyone who may be partially sighted or temporarily without sight would need personal assistance on the Danaher unit because it only provided a hand-held Braille activation control supplementing the push button full-face ballot.

Based on email correspondence, Dr Michael Fisher, a Yale professor and co-founder of the organization who appeared at the Newtown forum on electronic voting last spring, echoed the concerns of local registrars regarding the Danaher unit as well.

“I don’t know how this machine accommodates disabled voters,” Mr Fisher wrote.