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Take Action: Participate in protecting our democracy!
They will meet Monday, February 13, 2006 at 2:00 PM
at the Wake County Office in the Big Conference Room on Left
Return to Main Action Alert - Return to County Board of Elections Alert
Contact your County Commissioners by phone and email, especially by phone
joe.bryan@co.wake.nc.us, bward10@prodigy.net, pjeffreys@nc.rr.com, tgurley@nclegalsolutions.com, citizens4kenn@aol.com, Harold.Webb@co.wake.nc.us, bward@co.wake.nc.us, herbcouncil@councilfinancial.com
Four Sample Messages - Very Short, Short and Longer Message With Full Talking Points
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Dear Commissioner ____________
The County Commissioners and the Board of Elections will be meeting Monday at 2:00 to discuss
voting systems for Wake County.
We ask county commissioners to reject the recommendation of the Wake County Board of Elections and require it to bring another recommendation, which, I hope, will continue the county's traditional and well-proven use of paper ballots with optical scan tabulators, only with some additional provisions to identify votes by precinct within 60 days after the election (not part of the election itself) and to provide ballot marking devices to meet HAVA requirements for disabled voters.
Advocates of voting integrity in Wake support opti-scan over DRE voting machines. We believe that touchscreen voting machines are unreliable, and their toilet paper ballot is experimental and not durable.
Excuses are being made in order to push BOE members and County Commissioners into purchasing voting systems that are not right for Wake County Voters.
Much is being made of the new state requirement that the precinct of all votes cast at one-stop sites in early voting be identified. The difficulty of this basic administrative task is being exaggerated into a crisis in order to scare county commissioners and board of elections members into purchasing the far more expensive but far less reliable touchscreen voting machines.
Some counties are not falling for the fear tactics. Durham county, for example is dealing with the very same issue in a level headed manner - by treating this as the administrative task that it is. There is no emergency here. The tally by precincts can be made up to 60 days after the election. This is not so different from sorting done in the past, and the cost of hiring people to do it could be paid from the interest on the savings of not buying DREs
Nothing should trump the goal of accurate, accessible, auditable and affordable voting.
Wake voters want the most accurate, affordable and accessible voting system for precincts and early voting - optical scan. Wake county voters have enjoyed confidence in their elections because of the county's traditional and well-proven use of paper ballots with optical scan tabulators
Touchscreen machines with a toilet paper ballot are the wrong choice for Wake voters because
- They arent as user friendly as a simple paper optical scan ballot, take longer to cast a ballot on,
- create long lines, since one machine can only handle about 150 voters in one day,
- are not easily voter verified,
- have a paper trail printout that is grossly inferior to the optical scan ballot in recountability.
- Have a paper trail that is up to 300 feet long for each machine, and
- Takes an estimated 36 hours for 4 people to recount about 150 ballots (on the paper trail).
- Have been found to have printer jams that result in loss of the paper ballot
Wake voters should not be asked to sacrifice accurate and accountable elections for the sake of some election officials convenience or desire to have flashy new equipment with lots of bells and whistles.
We should stick with reliable technology that works, and let other counties but NOT WAKE be the beta test for touchscreen machines with a toilet paper ballot.
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Very short sample message to Commissioners
Dear Commissioner _________
The County Commissioners and the Board of Elections will be meeting Monday at 2:00 to discuss
voting systems for Wake County.
We ask county commissioners to reject the recommendation of the Wake County Board of Elections and require it to bring another recommendation, which, will continue the county's traditional and well-proven use of paper ballots with optical scan tabulators, and to provide ballot marking devices to meet HAVA requirements for disabled voters.
Touchscreen machines are not mandated, and add an additional $600,000 cost to the taxpayers.
Funding from the Help America Vote Act will cover 92% of the cost of the optical scanner/ballot marking solution, but will only pay 68% of the costs that 2 of the Board of Elections Members want. But do not delay your vote in the hopes of getting the law changed - because you will risk losing HAVA funding, risk a lawsuit from the US DOJ, and you will burden the taxpayers with the full cost of replacing outdated voting equipment in the near future.
Spreadsheet available here
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Short Sample Message to Commissioners
Dear Commissioner _______
We ask county commissioners to reject the recommendation of the Wake County Board of Elections and require it to bring another recommendation, which, I hope, will continue the county's traditional and well-proven use of paper ballots with optical scan tabulators, only with some additional provisions to identify votes by precinct within 60 days after the election (not part of the election itself) and to provide ballot marking devices to meet HAVA requirements for disabled voters
1)Our Optech IIIs must be replaced since they do not meet HAVA federal standards nor the ADA capability as well as our state's paper verification. Delaying their replacement beyond April is not an option--the Dept of Justice has already sued lagging states and the State BOE staff is proceeding throughout the state.
2)We deserve to secure our $2.4 million in HAVA funds. With 95 plus counties already selecting their machines from the State BOE, Wake should not wait for a reversal or change in vendors.
3)Optical Scans have served Wake well for 15 years in elections and recounts. We should stay with them and order M100s and the related ADA compliant AutoMarks, particularly since they are 1/3 the cost and more reliable than the DRE touchscreen voting machines that the Wake BOE wants to buy for Early Voting.
4)The light May primary and Early Voting mechanics should not drive your decision. What matters are voter confidence, reliability and election integrity, and obeying the law.
5) The AutoMark works with OpScan ballots and is preferred by blind and disabled voters and it allows them (and visually impaired seniors)to vote like everyone else in the precinct.
6) The Board of Elections Proposal (2-1 vote) costs an extra $750,000 beyond the HAVA funds in order to buy some 140 iVotronic DREs for Early Voting in November which is one of the reasons our respected, BOE Chair, Dr. Gilbert voted against it. This is the Option # 4 on cost proposal spreadsheet .
7)As an alternative, you could recommend Option 5 (M100s and AutoMarks for early Voting and all precincts) - this requires the least extra funds but still gives us reliable upgrades to our current machines and treats all blind/disabled voters fairly. Yes, precinct splits for Early Voting in October, 2006, may require special handling but no worse than reading the miles of paper trails inside the iVotronics. This is why Durham County selected the method used in Option 5.
Your decision on Monday is critical for Wake County for the next decade and should be based on vote integrity, confidence, and cost effectiveness. Please give our voters the Optical Scans and AutoMarks they prefer with the best cost option.
Thank you,
Spreadsheet available here
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Longer Message/Talking Points to Wake County Commissioners:
Dear Wake County Commissioner:
You will be meeting with the Wake County Board of Elections on Monday to discuss the voting equipment choices.
We ask county commissioners to reject the recommendation of the Wake County Board of Elections and require it to bring another recommendation, which, I hope, will continue the county's traditional and well-proven use of paper ballots with optical scan tabulators, only with some additional provisions to identify votes by precinct within 60 days after the election (not part of the election itself) and to provide ballot marking devices to meet HAVA requirements for disabled voters
Wake County has been voting on paper ballots and counting them with optical scanners since 1992. They work great, but the machines need to be replaced because they aren't certified to the latest Federal
elections law standards.
The Wake Board of Elections met on Jaunary 24th and voted to have optical scan in all 189 precincts, BUT
they didn't get to vote on an option to have 100% optical scan for Early Voting sites as well as precinct polling places. Instead - two of the three BOE members voted to put DRE touchscreen machines in a single
Early Voting site at the BOE headquarters in Raleigh.
Older touchscreen machines lost the vote in Carteret County in 2004. The new machines have 300 foot long thermal paper trails that can be used to do recounts, but the equipment has never been fully tested to make sure
it works - won't jam and take a machine out of use. What's more - there is no procedure to count the votes on a 300 foot long roll of thermal paper tape that will take 37.5 hours to count the entire tape. And the
cost will be horendous!
Durham County is going 100% optical scan, and they will have to do a small amount of hand sorting to make sure that they can count the votes allocated by precinct as well as the overall total. We can do that too!
Please visit the website http://www.ncvoter.net if you need talking points.
The County Commissioners have been listening to your emails and phone calls made last week - they held off voting until this Monday. At first they didn't want to even make a motion to vote on the original proposal
by the Board of Elections - talk about a vote of "no confidence"! More calls will make an impression as well.
The Wake Board of Elections wants to buy touchscreen voting machines with thermal paper rolls so the voter can verify their votes before they are cast.
This is experimental technology from one vendor - ES&S - that has never been fully tested before being dumped on the public. Where the touchscreens of other vendors have been used - from Diebold - their touchscreens with thermal printers have eaten between 1.75% and 2.00% of the thermal paper votes which can never be recounted! Does this sound like a good idea? Would you buy something at a store with your credit
card and not get a receipt?
Just because the machines have been certified for use in North Carolina doesn't mean that they will work! Especially since the state Board of Elections didn't fully test the machines before certifying them - they
claimed that Federal certification was good enough!
Even the Wake Board of Election's own paid expert - Mr. Glenn Newkirk - endorses the view that the thermal paper trial is experimental technology that is likely to jam up the machines and cause confusion and
longer lines in polling places. Read the letter to Congress he signed on
to at http://www.electiontech.org/downloads/SAAFE-Prop%5B1%5D.pdf
And touchscreen voting equipment is more expensive - will cost between $250,000 and $500,000 more for Wake County taxpayers to buy it instead of the more affordable optical scanning equipment. And it costs more
per vote for touchscreen votes than for optical scan votes!
Even if we only have DRE touchscreen voting for the 30% of the total voting public that uses Early Voting, that would have cost us another $269,000 in the 2004 Election for the 100,000 voters who voted Early in
2004. If we had to hand-sort them the way that Durham will do, it will cost between $5,000 to $10,000 to do that - quite a savings over thermal paper!
Even though Durham is smaller than Wake County, they still have comparable costs per vote with their older op-scan system.
Touchscreen voting is a bad idea - we want 100% optical scan for all voting because it is more accurate, trustworthy and affordable. Let Mecklenburg, Forsyth and Guilford Counties have their touchscreen
machines, lost and under-votes and higher cost per vote!
Spreadsheet available here
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