NEW: State embraces voter machine technology

By Celeste Calvitto, Journal Staff Writer | Saturday, January 14, 2006

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When South Dakota’s 485,000 registered voters head for the polls this year, they’ll get their first look at the latest in voting-machine technology.

Whether everybody will go for it is another matter. But Secretary of State Chris Nelson says his office is ready to find out.

“We don’t know whether one percent or 50 percent will use it,” Nelson said, noting that the traditional method of marking a ballot in a voting booth will still be available. “But the idea behind it is to make sure every vote is counted, and that it is counted the way you intended it.”

The new electronic touch-screen voting machines and optical scanners are required under the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA. The voting-reform measure was passed in 2002 as a result of the problems in Florida and Missouri during the 2000 election.

By law, the machines must be in place for the primary elections in June, but they will make their debut during municipal and school elections in Sioux Falls and Madison in April, Nelson said.

“Hopefully there will be a good voter turnout,” Nelson said.

Nelson and Dan Burke, the state’s HAVA coordinator, have been taking a new Automark voting machine to legislative committee meetings to demonstrate how it works.

An optical-scan ballot is inserted into the machine and it appears on a terminal. Voters use a touch-screen to make their choices.

The machines are designed to help disabled voters cast ballots in private without assistance.

They are programmed so that people who are blind can use headphones to listen to the choices through headphones. Keypads are accompanied by Braille markings, and there is also a zoom feature which allows the voter to enlarge the printing on the ballot.

The machines can be programmed to provide language assistance. In South Dakota, several counties will have machines where the ballot can be heard in Lakota through the headphones.

“Wherever a translator is required, there will be an Automark at those polling places,” Burke said.

The Automark even tells you if you’ve made too many choices. For example, if you choose three names in a contest where you can only vote for two people, a prompt will appear, and you can go back and make an adjustment.

The beauty of the system, Nelson said, is that the machine itself does not count votes; the optical-scan ballot provides a paper record. “It meshes technology and the integrity of the process,” Nelson said.

The $4.6 million program includes 658 machines to be distributed statewide.

Contact Celeste Calvitto at 394-8438 or Celeste.Calvitto@rapidcityjournal.com.