Bills may impact voters

After months of fair campaigning, voters may start casting ballots in mid-October on ATM-style electronic voting machines that feature ballots with opinion questions and without a straight party voting option.

At least that's the scenario created by more than a dozen election-related bills before the 2006 Legislature. While some of the proposals are prompted by requirements of the 2001 Help America Vote Act, many of them are changes adopted in other states or driven by problems in recent elections and could have a significant impact on candidates and voters this year.

The most significant change for voters will be the implementation of electronic voting machines, which will be in use statewide for the June primaries — even if a bill authorizing their use and establishing guidelines does not pass this session.

The bill is still being drafted but will essentially overhaul the election code, which is currently written for the use of the soon-to-be-obsolete punch card ballots, said Michael Cragun, the deputy director of Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert's office. Even if it did not pass, they could still "experiment" with the machines and try to pass it next year.

About a half-dozen of the election bills are being run for the state elections office, which is managed by the lieutenant governor, to clarify state code and help better manage elections, Cragun said. Among those are HB67, which would allow overseas military personnel to vote via e-mail if they could not vote by a mailed absentee ballot, and HB13, which would allow larger precincts to accommodate quickly growing urban areas.

Voters may also have the ability to cast ballots two weeks in advance, which Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen said would make voting run more smoothly. The bill authorizing early voting, HB15, is currently in the House.

"It will be a great convenience to voters," she said. "They can go to satellite offices to vote when they want, instead of having to cram all of those people into polling locations for 13 hours on election day."

Another bill Swensen would like to see passed is HB231, which would remove the option for people to vote a straight party ticket.

Although the bill has not fared well in previous sessions, Swensen hopes it may have a better chance this year because the electronic machines will add an extra dimension of difficulty. On the electronic ballot, voters who vote for one party but want to cross party lines in some races will have to first deselect their chosen party's candidate, then select the other candidate. With punch cards, any vote for a specific candidate automatically trumped any straight party vote.