Norco Council Approves Lever Look-a-Like For Future Elections

Ron Angle finally ended his boycott of the Northampton County Council dais last night, ascending into the stratosphere with seven other council members. But he was still the sole vote against a lever look-a-like endorsed by seven council members.

Sequoia Voting Systems, in the elections business for over 100 years, won over the elections commission, council and even me. Its product, technically called the Advantage D-10, already serves most of New Jersey, Louisiana and Montgomery County. A disabled elections commission member reports it is extremely user friendly, with buttons located within easy reach. The system does mimic the lever machine, presenting a full face ballot to the voter. Each machine is independently operated and is run on firmware.

Dr. Alan Brau, a leading voting rights activist, conceded that the Advantage has many "good points" and is a "strong system from a hardware standpoint." But he stressed there is no way you can really be sure your vote counts, and suggested that we run one election with paper ballots until we have time to pursue other options. Instead of giving a nonlocal vendor millions, he argued it made for sense to hire people locally to count the votes, and argued other jurisdictions have done so very quickly. He claimed we could conduct an election for $100 to $200 thousand, and our biggest expense would be the purchase of an automark for visually disabled voters.

Sequoia was asked to respond to Dr. Brau, and started by acknowledging that it actually sells the products used for elections with paper ballots. But its project manager, who started out as a county clerk in Montgomery County, said it would be "close to catastrophic for the voters in your county to use paper ballots." He noted most paper ballots break up the party and that questions of "voter intent" will invariably arise, just like they do with punch cards.

Councilman Charles Dertinger, himself a former elections commissioner, noted that Pennsylvania, with its many jurisdictions, would always have a much larger ballot than commonly found elsewhere. Because of this, he thought it would be impossible to get results using paper ballots until well into the next day. He noted that the county already has to "scour" the area for elections workers, and would have a very hard time finding the additional staff needed to count the votes. Finally, he noted that voters are already comfortable with full face ballots that appear on what he calls "the big green machine." Voters will be reassured by a lever look-a-like whose only major difference is that it is electronic.

Although I was leaning towards optical scanning or paper ballots, Dertinger made too compelling a case for Advantage D-10, which can easily be retrofitted to add a paper ballot backup if the state decides to impose that requirement. He very nearly persuaded Angle, too, but Angle was unable to support a system that has no paper trail. As he pointed out last night, his main problem is with the state, for not insisting on it.

The county will load up with 300 of these babies, which weigh 225 lb. per machine. Price? $1.8 million, but the state will reimburse us.

Angle and Dertinger, usually at each other's throats, were unusually cordial to each other last night, and reportedly left the courthouse together, holding hands.

Update: The Morning Calls' Joe Nixon has a detailed account, including a video demonstration, located here. Sarah Cassi's equally detailed report, published in The Express Times, is located here. Wayne Grube absence is noted in both stories, and I hope the lousy weather had more to do with that than his health.