The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO

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Discussion

September 9, 2006

New equipment boosts election costs

By Susan Redden

sredden@joplinglobe.com

Voting by way of new equipment designed to serve blind and disabled voters proved to be an expensive proposition in the August election.

Jasper County Clerk Ron Mosbaugh said 16 votes were cast using the new system purchased to comply with federal voting laws.

The 16 votes divided into the $13,337 that the county spent to program the equipment, and to pay judges to help voters use the system, translates to $888.57 per vote.

Factoring in the cost to buy the equipment, brings the per-vote cost to nearly $16,000.

The county bought 53 machines, called DREs for Direct Voting Electronic, at a cost of $238,500, using federal money from the Help America Vote Act.

“We bought one for every polling place and three back-up machines in case one broke down,” Mosbaugh said. “County funds didn’t pay for that, but it did pay for the special judges, their training and transportation, and programming the machines.”

Costs in Newton County were somewhat less. The county has fewer polling places, so 24 machines were purchased, also using federal funds. The county had to pay for programming, but did not hire extra workers to work the machines.

No votes were cast using the machines in Newton County, said Brenda Wheeler, deputy elections clerk.

Mosbaugh said Jasper County and other counties in the state and nation bought the machines to comply with federal requirements. He said he does not object to the mandate, but is bothered that counties were directed to put the machines at every polling place.

“It’s terrible what the public is going to end up having to pay,” he said. “I would have preferred to buy fewer machines and put them at the courthouse or larger polling places and let those voters use them there, rather than having them at every precinct.”

He said state election officials had suggested counties allow any voter to use the DRE system, to increase the use of the specialized equipment.

“But it’s so complicated, that there were several disabled voters who tried to use it and gave up. They had an election judge or someone with them mark their ballot, which is what they were used to doing,” he said.

The equipment is gong to be even more challenging to use when the ballot involves long, complicated constitutional amendments or other complex issues.

“The voter is having to listen to all of that (with headphones that are part of the system) before they vote. I’m afraid they’re going to fall asleep before they’re ready to cast their ballots,” Mosbaugh said.

The August election cost about $95,000, counting expenses from the DREs and the optical-scan equipment used to cast other ballots.

“It used to be that a city or town would want to have a special election and they could, because they could pay the costs. I think those days are over,” Mosbaugh said.

Participating entities share election costs, based on their number of registered voters, and costs to print ballots, program voting machines and train and pay election judges who oversee the balloting.



Optical scan

The optical-scan voting equipment in use in Jasper County for more than a year also was purchased with federal funds offered to counties so they could retire older punch-card voting systems.

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