Wake rejects touch-screen voting
Published: Mon, Feb. 13, 2006 05:45PM
Modified Mon, Feb. 13, 2006 06:16PM
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closeWake County voters will stick with paper ballots.
County commissioners decided today to buy new optical-scan ballot counters and rejected a proposal for 13 additional touch-screen voting machines.
The decision led to applause from verified voting activists, who had questioned the touch-screen machines’ reliability.
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Like other North Carolina counties, Wake’s machines were decertified last year based on new state and federal standards. The county must buy all new machines in time for the May 2 primary.
Last week, the county’s Board of Elections requested that commissioners approve using optical-scan ballots on Election Day and touch-screen machines for early voting.
They were concerned that hand-sorting the paper ballots from early voting would be cumbersome and could lead to security problems. Touch- screen machines would sort the results automatically.
The touch-screen machines, which are similar to an ATM, are used in Mecklenburg and Guilford counties, but have never been tried in Wake.
Voting activists argued that the touch-screen machines would be more expensive and less reliable. They said the machines’ thermal paper trail would not withstand the rigors of a recount.
“Why spend extra money for a dubious and experimental technology?” said Andrew Silver, 64, a Cary epidemiologist.
Commissioner Phil Jeffreys, a retired postal worker, said he was not concerned about the difficult of hand-sorting an estimated 90,000 ballots after next fall’s Election Day.
“I worked in a post office for 30 years and it’s not a lot (to sort),” he said.
County commissioners unanimously rejected the proposal and approved a second request from the elections board to request all optical-scan ballot counters.
John Gilbert, chairman of the elections board, said that hand- counting would be a temporary solution. He predicted that the county’s vendor would eventually improve its ballot-counting machines, making hand-sorting unnecessary.
If not, he said the county can always switch to touch-screen machines later.
Staff writer Ryan Teague Beckwith can be reached at 836-4944 or Get it all with convenient home delivery of The News & Observer.
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