Sean Sands, The Gazette

July 13, 2005

Takoma Park officially decides to use paper ballots in the fall!

Voters in Takoma Park will use paper ballots in the fall, following City Council action last week to reject electronic voting machines.

And to help count the ballots, the city will issue a wider call for election judges, raising the pay for the 16-hour-plus election day work, though a restriction on judges' participation in political campaigns, including ballot questions, will stand.

"I think one of the most important things that the council does is to maintain the integrity of city elections," Mayor Kathy Porter said. "And part of that responsibility is not just making sure that people are handling the elections with integrity and that the judges are unbiased, but also making sure that the public has confidence that that is the case."

The council decided July 5 to forgo using the touch-screen machines provided by the Montgomery County Board of Elections, a move that will save the city several thousand dollars, including the cost of security while the machines are unattended. Instead, voters will use traditional paper ballots on Election Day Nov. 8 to make their choices for mayor, city council.

City Clerk Jessie Carpenter said College Park had used paper ballots in its last two elections, and that the city had the option of adopting the polling and counting procedures used by College Park's Board of Election Supervisors, or to develop its own in the fall.

Takoma Park council members all but decided to use paper ballots last month, but had questions about how the city would recruit a sufficient number of election judges to manage a hand-count of the ballots. In the past, the city has had "just enough" election judges to staff the city's single polling place at the Municipal Building, Carpenter said.

To help bring in a higher number of judges, Carpenter offered last week several options, including changing election judge requirements to include registered voters from outside the city and to lift the restriction on people actively involved in campaigns. In a follow-up discussion Monday, the council decided to expand the pool of eligible election judges to include registered voters in either the city or Montgomery County.

In addition, judges will get a pay increase, going from $60 for an entire day's work to $135, a number that includes time spent at a training session. For the position of chief judge, which previously earned $75, the city will pay $175, including training.

The numbers are based on a comparison with other state jurisdictions prepared by the clerk's office. The City of Greenbelt pays the same amount, except for an additional $25 for training.

On the issue of election judge qualification, Greenbelt doesn't place any requirements on its judges, though preference is given to city residents.

Councilwoman Joy Austin-Lane (Ward 1) said she would have liked the city to allow registered voters from Prince George's County or Washington, D.C., to serve as judges, but her colleagues decided instead to limit participation to Montgomery County since city voters also are eligible to vote in county elections.

The council also noted that non-U.S. citizens, who are allowed to register with the city clerk's office to vote in municipal elections, could serve as judges.

The move to paper follows a City Council resolution passed last year in support of electronic voting machines with a verifiable paper record of each vote cast. But this year, the focus on paper ballots switched to one of cost and community involvement in the voting process.

In addition, council members said Monday they would consider asking city voters to consider a new format for casting votes in 2007 called instant runoff voting, a process that doesn't work with current touchscreen voting machines.

Instant runoff voting would allow residents to rank candidates for a single office by preference, so that if one candidate fails to get a majority of the votes (more than 50 percent), the person with the fewest number of votes is eliminated and a runoff recount is conducted. Advocates of instant runoff voting say the method eliminates the prospect of a so-called spoiler candidate and promotes better campaigning, since candidates also will seek second- and third-choice votes.

"One of the nice byproducts of Takoma Park's going to paper ballots is that it's actually cheaper, it almost certainly will have a lower rate of errors, and you can use a more modern way of voting," instant runoff voting, said Robert Richie, a city resident and executive director of FairVote: The Center for Voting and Democracy in Old Town.

City Council members expressed support Monday for a non-binding advisory referendum on November's ballot to get voters' perspective on the issue. However, any changes to the city's voting method would require a charter amendment, so 2007 would be the earliest the city could use the process.

"Now that they don't have to use the 'modern machines,' I'm hoping we can use a modern system of voting," Richie added.

The council will approve the procedure for the November election, including whether or not to have a ballot question on instant runoff voting, sometime this fall. Historically, the council has established the procedures in September, following the council's return from the summer recess, the city clerk said.