1/25/08 - County may be close to selecting voting machine

(As published by Cortland Standard, Evan Geibel reporting)

The County will likely choose the same model of ballot marking devices as its neighbors in the push to come into compliance with the federal Help America Vote Act.

Republican Election Commissioner Bob Howe said the county would likely purchase the Sequoia Imagecast ballot marking device, one of three options approved Thursday by the state Board of Elections.

The machine has been endorsed by representatives of the counties that make up the state Election Commissioner Association’s Region 5, which includes Cayuga, Chemung, Cortland, Schuyler, Seneca, Steuben, Tioga, Tompkins and Yates counties.

Because it operates as both a ballot marking device and as a voting machine with minor modifications, Howe said he hopes that the machines, estimated to cost a total of $250,000 initially, would allow the county to fund the purchase of its new electronic voting machines entirely with state monies.

The three machines approved by the state are the Sequoia Imagecast, Premier Automark and the ES&S Automark. All three are optical scan ballot machines.

The optical-scan machines were the choice of the state Democrats, while Republicans favored touch-screen voting machines.

Democratic Election Commissioner Bill Wood refused to comment Thursday to the Cortland Standard.

Counties in the state will be required to have at least one handicapped-accessible polling place, using the so-called ballot marking devices, or BMDs, for the Feb. 5 presidential primary. The county currently owns an Avante BMD that will be used on Feb. 5.

“Anyone that feels they need a machine like that to vote on, they can come to the County Office Building,” Howe said Thursday.

By the primary election in September 2008, every polling place in the county has to have a handicapped-accessible BMD in place. Since each device costs more than $6,000, this would cost about $250,000 to put a BMD in each of the county’s 42 polling locations. Some locations actually encompass more than one polling place, but a single BMD should suffice at each location for 2008, Howe said.

Ballot marking devices simply allow a voter to fill out a ballot, while the voting machines actually record the votes.