Wednesday, March 5, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
Despite hour-long waits and some election-night snafus, the County Commission still stands behind its $6.8 million electronic voting system -- and the person responsible for it, Registrar of Voters Kathryn Ferguson.
"We had an overwhelmingly positive response to the machines by the public," Commissioner Erin Kenny said. "I'm sure Kathryn will have a flawless election next time."
Ferguson on Tuesday discussed the problems with the 1996 primary and general elections and what steps the Elections Department has taken and will take to make sure the same problems don't happen in the future.
"I know we had long lines," Ferguson told the board Tuesday. "That is not acceptable to me, and I know that is not acceptable to the board."
Ferguson reminded the board that it voted 7-0 in 1993 to replace its punch-card balloting system with an electronic voting system to eliminate voting errors and fraud, and return public confidence in the election process.
But part of the board's agenda was to make voting easier.
Surveys conducted by elections staff showed 98 percent of the voters using the machines during a 1994 pilot project responded favorably to the machines, Ferguson said. That was the green light for the county to buy 1,300 machines and gear up for a countywide system by the 1996 elections.
Ferguson said Sequoia Pacific, the machines' manufacturer, has agreed to give the county 168 new units, and the software to convert the 147 machines used for early voting for use on the day of the election as well.
Kenny announced that she negotiated with the company for an additional 100 machines.
"We hope this will strengthen our relationship with the county and provide an opportunity to show the community that these machines really work," Sequoia Pacific representative Ron Click said.
Ferguson said another 70 machines would still be needed to meet the 1998 voter turnout based on current population projections.
"I understand that when we went into this we expected to buy some additional machines in the future," Commissioner Bruce Woodbury said, directing Ferguson to calculate exactly how many machines would be needed and the cost.
Commission Chairwoman Yvonne Atkinson Gates advocated that Ferguson also push for greater participation in mail-in and early voting to help reduce lines at the polls on election day.
Gates said she wanted a report on the number of machines that would be needed over a longer period of time to keep pace with growth.
Ferguson also said the department was short on polling places, and expects to have 250 polling sites set up for the 1998 elections, compared to 155 open in 1996.
Critics of the system said the county could have saved money by replacing the punch card ballots with optical scanning machines. But Woodbury noted that information provided by Ferguson showed even longer lines at the polls, massive tabulation errors and other problems.
In Bexar County, Texas, where Ferguson came from, voters waited three hours or longer to vote, the county recorded 284 tabulating errors, and so many other problems that the county actually abolished the elections department.
Assistant County Manager Randy Walker said a cost projection over 13 years showed a $1.3 million difference between the electronic voting system versus optical scanning systems, without calculating the labor savings.
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