Elections officials deploy new balloting system
by By Barbara LaBoe / The Daily News
published 02/09/2010
Cowlitz County is the 22nd county in Washington to switch to digital ballot scanning.
Tallying Cowlitz County elections results should go faster and smoother thanks to new digital balloting system that debuted in Tuesday's school levy elections.
The new digital scan system that allows workers to scan, store and later tally an exact digital image of each paper ballot, said Cowlitz Elections Supervisor Carolyn Myers.
The system also allows elections staff to correct or resolve questionable marks on screen. That cuts down on the work as ballots arrive in the Auditor's Office and means that more ballots can be counted on election night . Also, close races should be resolved sooner, Myers said.
"This so much faster," Myers said Tuesday as Kelso and Woodland school levy ballots were run through the scanner. "We've been resolving any questionable ballots as we go. In the past we'd be at least three days behind because of the backlog."
The old optical scan ballot machines couldn't read some ballots either because a voter had changed his mind and crossed out the first vote or didn't fully fill in their bubble of their selection. When that happened, elections workers had to take a blank ballot and fill it in by hand to create an exact replica ballot that could be fed through the machine. (The original ballot can't be altered in case there were questions about results).
During large elections two workers would spend half of each day for several days producing readable replica ballots, Myers said. Tuesday afternoon, though, when the machine couldn't read a faint mark, an election worker was able to review the paper ballot and then mark a "yes" on the digital version with a single key stroke.
For security, the Hart InterCivic system records each digital ballot that is corrected, as well as the time the action was taken and which worker was using the machine. The original paper ballots also are retained in case there is any question.
Because each ballot has its own bar code, the machine won't let a ballot be counted twice or a ballot from another election to be included in results, Myers said. (The bar codes are random and do not trace back to the voter.)
The new system cost $236,000, with the state is expected to cover half the costs. Cowlitz County is the 22nd county in Washington to switch to digital ballot scanning. The money for the county's portion comes from a equipment replacement fee charged junior taxing districts as part of election costs.
In addition to the new balloting machines, the county also has added areas for citizens to watch the election process.
Until now, anyone wanting to witness ballot openings or canvassing had to crowd around the table of election workers. Now live images and sound will be beamed to three television screens at the elections office, coffee court and auditor's office in the Administration Building. The video system is designed to give workers more room and allow for more comfortable viewing by observers, Myers said.
The $46,000 video system was paid for with a federal Help America Vote Act grant.