Reply #9: CA: County decides on voting system (Alameda County) [View All]

Article Last Updated: 06/09/2006 02:57:57 AM PDT
Supervisors opt to buy Oakland firm's product despite resident's pleas to avoid computers
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER

After a three-year experiment with Diebold Election Systems and touch-screen voting machines, Alameda County is paying $13.25 million for a new, more paper-based voting system — and still being accused of selling out to corporate election fixing.
"You're completely ignoring every single piece of testimony today," shouted Allen Michaan, owner of the Grand Lake Theater, whose marquee has featured a near-weekly screed against any use of computers in voting.
County supervisors spent a year agonizing over what instruments of democracy to buy for the November elections and beyond. On Thursday, voting activists pressed the county to lead a national protest against computerized voting and rely instead on hand-marked, hand-counted paper ballots.
In a split vote, however, supervisors chose a middle-of-the-road system recommended by county officials and supplied by Oakland-based Sequoia Voting Systems. Sequoia would provide 1,000 optical scanners for most polling place voters and 1,000 touch-screen machines to accommodate voters with disabilities.
Most of the cost will be paid by $8.7 million in state and federal grants, plus $3 million that Diebold is paying Alameda County to buy back the 4,300 touch-screens that the county purchased in 2002 for $12 million. Those monies will cover all but a fraction of the equipment cost, plus $350,000 that Sequoia wants for developing instant runoff voting for Berkeley and other cities.
Alameda County has been a hotbed of resistance to electronic voting, and the presence of any touch-screens made activists livid. It was "shameful," said Gary Crane, executive director of Fair Elections, an East Bay voting group, for liberal Alameda County to entrust votes to software from any private corporation.

http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/ci_3917699