Action Alert

June 1, 2005

List of county election officials (pdf)

Now that legislation requiring a voter-verifiable paper ballot (VVPB) has passed in West Virginia, the counties are having to decide how to implement their equipment purchases/upgrades and become compliant with the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). It's clear from research and from recent news reports that operating costs for touch screen or DREs (as well as initial deployment costs) are higher than for precinct-based optical scan systems.

For example, election officials in Miami-Dade County in Florida  recommended scrapping the county's DRE system in favor of paper ballots with optical scanners.  After 2+ years of use and after expending $24.5 million dollars to purchase it, they have reached the conclusion that the much higher than expected operating costs and the exponential increase in operational headaches make it more cost-effective to replace the system than to keep it. (Click here to read the South Florida Sun-Sentinel article.) Unfortunately, county officials often still believe that touch screens have lower operating costs (as evidenced in this article from the Charleston Daily Mail).

Please contact your county clerk and county commissioners and urge them to choose an optical scan system over DREs. Letter to the editor would also be appreciated/helpful. Use the information in the referenced articles as well as the information below to help put together your letter. A roster of County Clerks, including name, address and phone number is available here.  If you need additional talking points e-mail julie@wvcag.org .

There are so many reasons NOT to buy DREs--even with the VVPB--and so many reasons to obtain precinct-based optical scan system instead.

The estimated cost to equip a polling place with 4 voting stations with touch screen or DRE voting machines with VVPB printers is $16,000, compared with the $10,500 it would cost to equip the same polling place with fold up voting booths, a precinct optical scanner (to warn against over and under votes) and a ballot marking device (to provide access for voters with disabilities). Under this scenario, the touch screen voting system is nearly 52% more expensive than the optical scan system.  

When you factor in increased maintenance and storage costs (because there are physically more units to maintain and require special storage facilities to keep battery back-up in each machine charged when not in use), increased costs for pre and post-election testing of the machines, and the larger number of poll workers needed to operate DRE polling places, the DRE system proves even more expensive. 

In addition, any county that deploys touch screens or DREs must still continue to print paper ballots (i.e.: optical scan ballots), for absentee, and probably provisional, voters.  So it is false to argue that a county will avoid having to print any ballots if they deploy DREs with VVPB printers. There is also the question of having paper ballots on hand at each polling place in the case of DRE failure or a lengthy power outage. 

In addition to being more cost effective, optical scan ballots have several advantages:

Optical scan ballots are their own voter verifiable paper ballot. While DREs with a printer attached provide a voter-verified paper record, that record is only ever counted in the case of a recount or manual audit. An optical scan ballot is counted in ALL cases -- initial counts, recounts, audits, final canvass  -- and is the one and only ballot of record.

Optical scan ballots provide a more uniform voting system. When augmented by at least one ballot marking devise per precinct, optical scan ballots provide access for voters with disabilities and allow all voters to use an identical paper ballot. 

Voters and election officials in the majority of West Virginia counties currently use and are already familiar with optical scan ballots. 

Under the Secretary of State's plan to help West Virginia counties become HAVA compliant, counties will be provided with an optical scan system (with a central counter), plus one handicap-accessible voting machine per precinct, at no cost. 

(Thanks to Robert Kibrick of Verified Voting for proving cost comparison information. Please visit their website for more information on legislation/regulations to require a voter-verifiable paper ballot at the national level and in the states. Consider joining Verified Voting and other advocacy organizations for Lobby Days June 9-10 at the U.S. House of Representatives and Democracy Days June 13-14 at the U.S. Senate. Click here for more information.)

Julie Archer WV
Citizen Action Group
1500 Dixie Street
Charleston, WV 25311
304-346-5891
www.wvcag.org