County opposes federal bill on vote machines

Salt Lake County leaders want the federal government to stop trying to force local leaders nationwide to change the way elections are run.

The Salt Lake County Council passed a resolution this week opposing federal legislation that would require all electronic voting machines to produce a voter-verifiable paper ballot that is "durable." The resolution narrowly passed on a party-line vote, with the Republicans voting in favor of the resolution.

The federal bill, HR811, seeks to prevent a repeat of problems that occurred in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, in the 2006 congressional election, when almost 10 percent of the paper receipts were smudged during an initial hand count and could not be used for any later hand counts or audits, said Matt Dennis, a spokesman for the bill's sponsor, Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J.Holt introduced the bill this past February, and it is now awaiting a vote from the U.S. House.

But Salt Lake County Councilman David Wilde said county clerks know best how to deal with problems with elections, not federal leaders.

"I believe our voting system here in Utah is working well," said Wilde, a Republican who sponsored the county resolution. "There may be other states that need to address this problem, but I don't think a one-size-fits-all approach is what we ought to do."

"Let us do things here in the state that we know how to do and we know we're doing."

Dennis said the bill prescribes "specific models or materials" for printing the receipts but only requires that the receipts be durable enough to withstand multiple counts.

States would have until the 2010 election to produce the improved receipts, although any state that uses machines without a paper receipt would have to replace those machines by 2008. Dennis said six states now use the machines without receipt printers.

Utah's machines, which are manufactured by Diebold, produce a paper ballot, and election officials are worried that the machines don't fulfill the durable-receipt requirement in the new legislation.

In the case of a recount, the bill also requires a hand recount of the paper trail. Jason Yocom, the county's chief deputy clerk, said those hand recounts "would invite a lot of human error."

Councilman Joe Hatch said he agreed with Yocom, but did not support the resolution in Tuesday's vote, because HR811 is "a work in progress."

"I think its more important for us to continue for us to work with the federal government," Hatch said.

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