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For the week of December 27 through January 2, 2000

State, county consider voting system changes


By TRAVIS PURSER
Express Staff Writer

Amid heightened public awareness of potential ballot-counting difficulties, Blaine County Clerk Marsha Reimann is investigating possible changes to the county’s voting system, which uses the same kind of punch-card machine made infamous in Florida.

For the two years she’s been in office, Reimann said, she and her crew of election volunteers have had no problems counting ballots with the eight-year-old punch-card machine.

Nevertheless, said Rep. Wendy Jaquet, D-Ketchum, the problems in Florida have raised general concerns about vote-counting accuracy. So, she asked Reimann to begin looking into possible improvements that could be made to all aspects of running an election.

The work taking place in Blaine County is part of a statewide effort initiated by the Idaho secretary of state and Association of County Clerks. On Jan. 11, an "election systems review task force," made up of members from those two entities, is scheduled to meet in Boise to review Idaho’s voting system and to discuss ways to use any money the federal government might provide for improvements.

Sen. Hal Bunderson, R-Meridian, who helped initiate the task force, said legislators expect to soon see a flurry of activity across the nation aimed at improving elections.

Recommendations from the task force may guide Idaho legislators in changing the state’s election laws.

Fourteen counties in Idaho use the decades-old Votamatic punch-card system, 14 use a newer optical scan system that reads pencil-lead marks made by voters and 16 of the state’s most sparsely populated rural counties still hand count plain paper ballots.

Several people involved in the Idaho effort said consolidation of those three types of systems into a single, newer type seems improbable, because it would be expensive and politically difficult. More likely, state and local governments will look at improving procedural and management practices during elections. That could mean finding ways to better educate voters and election volunteers about the existing machines so fewer mistakes occur on election day.

Reimann said the punch-card system works better here than in other, more populated places because during each election Blaine County’s single counting machine has to count only about 8,000 ballots. That allows her volunteers to "fluff and chad" each ballot to make sure the machine can read it properly.

"I’m very confident with our system," she said. "I think Florida’s problem is they were not able to go through every ballot by hand."

She estimated that switching to the newer optical scan system in Blaine County would cost $20,000--difficult to fund with the county’s $36,000 annual elections budget.

Reimann is not scheduled to attend the Jan. 11 task force meeting, but she said she plans to talk with two members of the group before the meeting so they can pass along her suggestions. Generally, she wants state and local governments to provide better voter education, but she declined to offer anything more specific than that until she has a chance to review written feedback from the November election’s volunteers.

Jaquet said she wants to see better directions given at the polls, especially for young voters who might be voting for the first time. She said also that a "check your chads" sign may be something that appears at future polling places.

Some changes the state could look at making include adding specifics to Idaho’s "voter intent" law, Bunderson said. Right now, he said, that law could cause confusion by leaving too much room for interpretation of ballots.

Also, he said, state law could be changed to allow counties to begin using new touch-screen computer technology at polls.

 

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