Jannette Pippin, The Daily News

July 14, 2005

BEAUFORT - The Carteret County Board of Elections has notified county and state officials that it no longer plans to use the county's electronic voting system and alternate plans for voting machines need to be made before the upcoming municipal elections.

Board of Elections Chairman Ed Pond said the board met this week and agreed that the county will no longer use the Patriot Electronic Voting System it purchased from California-based UniLect Corp. nearly 10 years ago. The UniLect system has been in question in Carteret County since the November 2004 election, when 4,438 votes were permanently lost because of a mishap over the storage capacity of a control unit used during the early voting period.

"We don't want the citizens of Carteret County to face another election with the uncertainty of their vote not being counted," Pond said.

Pond notified County Manager John Langdon and N.C. Board of Elections Executive Director Gary Bartlett of the local board's decision in a July 12 letter. The letter also solicits input from the county on potential alternative voting methods and funding.

"We have offered to have them participate and give us guidance on what (the county is) willing to fund," Pond said.

Langdon said that while the elections board decides on the voting system used in county elections, it's the cost that is the concern to the county.

"The elections board is going to have to come to some kind of accord with (county) commissioners about what it's going to cost and some of these estimates are pretty steep," Langdon said.

The county budgeted $25,000 for the fall 2005 elections. Under the three options presented, an additional $25,000 to $125,000 would be needed depending upon the alternative selected.

Pond said the least-favored option - the use of paper ballots - would be the most expensive with an estimated $100,000 to $125,000 in costs for additional manpower to tabulate ballots.

The other options involve renting election equipment - either an optical scan voting system or a direct recording electronic voting system, which would be similar to the existing system yet different from UniLect.

The cost of renting an optical scan system is estimated at about $25,000 beyond what is now budgeted and the DRE system would be approximately $40,000 more.

Langdon said he gathering more information about the county's financing responsibility and noted that the request comes just after the county has closed out its budget deliberations.

"It puts us in an awkward position coming two weeks into the fiscal year," he said.

Pond said the Carteret County Board of Elections had expected the state Board of Elections to give the county some direction by now on the use of the existing voting system.

With no word yet, the local board felt it had to make a call.

"It's the election board's opinion that the citizens have suffered a grievous wrong as a result of the use of this (UniLect Patriot) equipment," Pond states in the letter.

To be prepared for the fall elections, the Carteret County Board of Elections will need to make a final decision by Sept. 1.

Pond said that in preliminary discussions with voting equipment vendors, they have said it should be possible to be ready for the upcoming municipal elections.

"We've got some indication from the vendors that they can probably do this without any problem if we decide something by Sept. 1," he said.

The election for the Atlantic Beach town council will be held on Oct. 11 and absentee ballots for that race must go out by Sept. 9. All other municipal elections are held in November.

Contact staff writer Jannette Pippin at jpippin@freedomenc.com or by calling (252) 808-2275.