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Alameda County Seeks New Electronic Voting System |
Contra Costa Times
August 30, 2005
OAKLAND - The Alameda
County Board of Supervisors is seeking a new electronic voting system that
could meet both state and federal requirements by January 1.
The
board voted unanimously today to request proposal for a "blended"
voting
system that would have one or two touchscreens plus one optical
scanner at
each polling place.
The new system could cost anywhere between $6 million
to $14 million,
according to a letter prepared for the supervisors by Elaine
Ginnold,
Alameda County's acting register of voters. However, the county
could
receive nearly $8.8 million from the federal Help America Vote
Act.
The decision to pursue the new blended system comes after a county
decision
earlier this month to revisit its agreement with Diebold Election
Systems
for a $6 million upgrade of its touch-screen voting system --
responding to
problems the system showed in tests during July.
The
county has about 4,000 Diebold touch-screens it uses in elections, but
faces
new mandates beginning in January that require all such electronic
equipment
to provide voters with printouts to verify their votes.
In late June,
county supervisors inked an agreement with Diebold to
negotiate a $6 million
upgrade in which it would exchange its touch-screens
for newer models that
come equipped with printers to meet the pending
requirements.
But
those plans were cast into doubt in July when Secretary of State Bruce
McPherson announced the new Diebold machines had failed a battery of tests
and could not be certified by the state.
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