S.L. County balking at new voting machines

Salt Lake County officials are not quite sold on new state-selected electronic voting machines, especially now that the county may have to foot a $10 million bill to implement the system.

Getting the Diebold touch-screen voting machines up and running by the end of the year has Salt Lake County leaders scraping together money and resources to comply with a federal Help America Vote Act mandating each state to upgrade voting systems.

And while the state has set aside roughly $10 million for its most populous county, Chief Administrative Officer Doug Willmore said that leaves the county footing the bill for another $10 million in personnel, storage space and additional machines for the new system.

The county will likely need to buy another 1,200 machines on top of the 2,800 funded by the state. That alone could run a bill of up to $4 million, Willmore said.

"The previous system was doing fine, but it's not compliant," he said. "We're interested in exploring all of our options, both for security reasons as well as financial reasons."

One of those options, Willmore added, may be to commission a county request for proposals to compete with the state's Diebold choice. If the county does opt out of the state's plan, it would likely forfeit any of the federal money.

That loss would be a huge financial crunch for the county, Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen said, and may make it tough to go it alone. Utah County officials already face that problem after opting out of the state's plan.

Swensen noted that the state may change its tune and offer some federal money to counties that choose their own systems — especially if the state's two largest counties turn their back on the state's Diebold machines.

Other states, for example, doled out the federal funds to the counties and let county leaders decide how to spend the money to meet the new standards, which require that voters be able to correct mistakes and that disabled voters have better access.

But while Swensen said she's not sure the state's choice is the best for the county, she will ask the County Council today for the first round of additional funding for the electronic voting system.

"We're trying to do a statewide system, but we are still considering whether there are any other options. We haven't abandoned that idea," Swensen said. "But no matter what we do, we're still going to need storage and personnel."

At least six new staffers are needed to manage the new voting system at a cost of about $226,000 a year. With the more advanced system, more hands-on training and technical background will be required, she said.