June 14, 2004

Secretary of state has ideas to fix ballot problems

Many voters in primary nullified choices by inadvertently voting twice

By Phil Kabler
Staff Writer

Secretary of State Joe Manchin said his office will have “a couple of recommendations” for county clerks to reduce the overvoting that plagued May Democratic primary returns in some counties.

“One of the biggest complaints we had with this last election was with overvotes, primarily for secretary of state,” Manchin, the Democratic candidate for governor, told a legislative interim panel studying voting issues.

Because of unusually long lists of candidates in both the secretary of state and gubernatorial primary, several counties split the secretary of state candidates into two columns on their ballots.

While all those ballots had the designation “continued” at the foot of the first column, most had nothing at the top of the second column to denote that it was the continuation of the secretary of state balloting.

Many voters inadvertently voted a second time in that column, nullifying their vote for the office, including more than 1,500 overvotes in Marion County alone, Manchin said.

One recommendation will be to restate the name of the office at the top of the second column.

Manchin also said Sunday he hopes he’ll see some advances in electronic voting systems that will give him the “comfort level” he needs to recommend those systems for use in the state.

Last summer, Manchin put plans for statewide electronic voting on hold, after several experts warned that the touch-screen machines could be susceptible to computer hacking.

Manchin said he is waiting for the development of touch-screen machines that will produce a printout of each completed ballot, to be stored in a lockbox within the machine.

“I’m one person who believes a paper trail would give people the level of confidence they would like to have,” he said.

Manchin said he’s seen prototypes of such machines, and said he’s hopeful he’ll see advances in the technology at the National Association of Secretaries of State conference next month.

Under the federal Help America Vote Act, West Virginia has to come up with a uniform voting system to replace paper and punch card ballots by 2006.

The state will have about $20 million in federal funds available to implement electronic voting, which Manchin plans to make available to counties through a revolving no-interest loan fund.

“We don’t recommend spending $20 million or $30 million to upgrade the system unless we believe we have the system we need,” Manchin said of waiting to make recommendations for electronic voting systems.

Currently, four counties use touch-screen machines for early voting, and Cabell County uses the machines for both early and Election Day voting.

Karen Cole, Cabell County clerk, said the machines were first used in the 2000 general election and have performed flawlessly.

She believes people have misconceptions about electronic voting, including that the machines could be hacked via the Internet.

She said the machines in Cabell County are freestanding, and that the votes are tabulated on a freestanding, dedicated personal computer without Internet or other computer network connections.

“There’s no way anyone on the outside ... could go in and alter anything that has been stored on this PC,” she said.

To contact staff writer Phil Kabler, use e-mail or call 348-1220.