The Harrison County Democratic Executive Committee strongly opposes any changes in our voting process at this time. The HCDEC is charged by state law with managing the Democratic Primary. The Election Commission’s current desire to take a giant step backwards, to an older system of questionable worth, places undue burden on the HCDEC. The Election Commission says that the problem is the tools. We disagree. We think it’s how those tools are being used. And how are they being used? In a word – poorly.

Details below:
Harrison County Switches Back To Old Voting System
Secretary of State Eric Clark's letter to County Supervisors
Supervisors Seek Justice Dept. Approval for Voting Change
Read Wendell Pruitt's Letter to the Sun Herald
Read Renick Taylor's Letter to the Sun Herald

The Harrison County Democratic Executive Committee is opposed to any change in voting systems at this time. We think that such a change would face challenges at three levels, and that not all, if any, of those challenges can be overcome in time for the August Primary.

The challenges:

The first is from the chief election officer of our own state, and the changes in the Mississippi Code that guide the use of the current voting system.

The second, maybe greater challenge, is in our continued compliance with the Help America Vote Act of 2002, especially the provisions contained in Title III, Section 301, paragraphs 1-3, concerning what’s come to be called “second chance voting.” We also have doubts about this change meeting requirements in that Act that incorporate other Federal laws like The Americans With Disabilities Act.

The third challenge is also found at the Federal level, and that is the approval by the Justice Department needed for any changes in electoral practices in Mississippi.

To say that any of these challenges could be met by the Primary, August 7, is absurd on its face. After all, August 7 is not the deadline in preparing for the election. That deadline is 45 days prior to the election. As this is written, that date is just over 30 days away.

Even considering this change, at this time, places undue burden on the Democratic Executive Committee. We are charged by state law with managing the Democratic Primary, and at this point that means preparing for the possibility of three different kinds of voting. We always train our poll workers in managing a paper election, just in case there is a machine failure at some precinct. Now we must train those managers for a paper election, an election run with the current voting machines, and an election run with machines that are not even in stock in the County.

We would be very clear, from this point on. We value our poll managers, and know we could not manage an election without their work. In most cases when a poll worker has problems, it can be traced back to having been given less than adequate training for the job they have been set to do. We take care to point out that we cast no blame on those workers and managers. We make the point that they must be trained, and that to give them tasks, but not the skills to accomplish those tasks, is grossly unfair. The responsibility for that training lies with the election officers of that election, not with the poll managers.

We do not want to appear that we are, like some, blaming our “tools” here. What we want is to be told, clearly and immediately, which tools we will be using.

There is an old saying, going back at least 700 years (you can look it up): “A bad workman will never find a good tool.”

We have to stop blaming the tools. We have to start thinking about the carpenters.

In June of 2006, the Democratic Executive Committee managed the first countywide election after Hurricane Katrina. It was also the first county election to use the new touch screen voting machines. We took on that new voting system and, with the help of our poll managers and some wonderful people in the Circuit Clerk’s office, we made that new system work.

It wasn’t easy. There was a lot to learn, and the tools we needed to learn were often late in coming from the Secretary of State’s office – but we took the tools we had and we did the job. We take responsibility for any problems voters may have faced, and we take some small pride in overcoming those problems.

After the election, we reviewed. We asked what worked, and how we could make those things work better. We asked what did not work, found out why, and took steps to avoid those problems in future elections. We set ourselves to be the best “carpenters” we could in future primary elections. We made sure to measure twice so we only had to cut once, because elections happen on just that one day.

The Election Commissioners of Harrison County had time to see all that, and to do all that. They had time to get the training they needed to manage elections in this new environment. They had time to train their poll managers in this new system. They had time to do all this well before the General Election in November of 2006. As to their success – we leave that judgment to the voters of Harrison County.

But that there were problems across the County in the General Election is clear enough. That those problems stand behind the Election Commission’s current desire to take a giant step backwards, to an older system of questionable worth, is just as clear.

The Election Commission says that the problem is the tools. We disagree. We think it’s how those tools are being used. And how are they being used? In a word – poorly.

In the General Election there was no use made of opening/closing managers, at least one poll manager at each precinct who was well trained in the use of the new machines. Such managers could have made sure that the machines were ready for voters when the polls opened, and ready for counting votes at the end of the day. Those managers could provide assistance at the precinct if there was a paper jam, or if an encoder failed, and handle the paperwork that surrounds the use of those new machines. This would have lessened, or even eliminated, the need for people from the Circuit Clerk’s office to dash madly around the County putting out brush fires.

Most importantly, taking steps to have such managers would have served the best interests of the voters of Harrison County.

The Secretary of State’s guidelines for using these machines – the guidelines set out by the chief elections officer of the state of Mississippi – cover the need for such managers. The Election Commissioners should know those guidelines. There’s no good reason why such managers couldn’t be found, and trained. Had such managers been available – had the Election Commission found and trained those managers – many of the problems in that General Election could have been avoided.

As to particular complaints about the new voting machines, they seem to fall into three groups.

The first is vague, and general – “problems with the machines.” In almost every case, when pressed for specifics, these problems fall into two groups: problems with the printers that provide a “paper trail,” and problems with either starting or closing the machines, at start or end of day.

The printer is the only moving part of the new machines, so it is the only source for mechanical problems. Such problems include paper jams and, in the General Election, problems with swelling of the rolls of thermal paper used in those printers, making them difficult to fit into the machine.

Opening/closing managers can be trained to deal with paper jams and how to clear them – it is as easy as fixing your belt if you missed a loop. Problems with swelling paper rolls can be addressed by keeping those rolls in a climate-controlled environment.

As for start up or end of day, instructions for doing either are simple enough. Connie Ladner, at the Circuit Clerk’s office, wrote a terrific set of easy to follow instructions for both procedures. But those instructions only work if followed, and they are only followed if poll managers (especially opening/closing managers) are trained to do so.

An associated problem here is that of battery failures in the encoders. These devices encode the voter access card, and give the voter the ballot they need in their precinct. While this encoding is always an important issue, it becomes a critical issue in the case of “splits,” where voters in the same precinct may vote in two or more different statewide or state district elections.

These encoders run on the same sorts of batteries that run pocket calculators. There is no reason why having spares on hand, at the precinct, could not resolve any problems with battery failure in those encoders.

Again, in the case of proper encoding, opening/closing managers can be set to take care of such matters. They can be charged with making sure that a voter in Gulfport #8A doesn’t get a ballot for Gulfport #8B, but they can only do this if they are trained to do it.

Both mechanical problems and problems with the electronic system that operates the machines can be readily addressed by more effective training. That training must start with training the trainers, and in the case of the General Election of 2006, that was the Election Commission. While some of those Commissioners may have “stepped up” to gain the skills needed to train poll managers – and if you can’t do it, you can’t teach it – it seems all too clear that in most cases the lack of training was the result of a lack in the trainers.

A second source of problems is with the costs of the new machines. There is some traction there; these machines aren’t cheap. But then, neither are those that the Election Commission wants to replace them with. When costs for the machines, the software that runs them, delivery and set up, and vendor service contracts are added together, the cost for going backwards will be significant.

When integration with SEMS is taken into account, the hours of labor involved in manually inputting information to that system, and the increased possibility of error that always comes with an increase in man-hours, the costs of the old system rise even higher.

When the cost of creating paper ballots is added, the cost of the old system rises again. When the legal requirements for storage of those paper ballots is considered, the cost of the old system goes up yet again.

None of the costs mentioned so far concern a critical cost that must not be overlooked, the cost of vendor support contracts essential to the best long-term use of any electronic system. It may bear worth reminding folks here that there are in fact quite a lot of hardware and software requirements that go into what is too often assumed about the old system. That is that the old system, since it used paper ballots, is in some way not an electronic voting system. It is just such a system.

Much of the concern about cost rests in a misunderstanding. Votes can be cast quickly – and waiting lines kept short – if the tools we have were adequately used. Efficient operation at the precincts – possible only through adequate training, but with the expectation that with each election we increase our stock of well-trained poll workers – is again the key.

In tabulation after the close of the election, votes cast on individual machines at each precinct can be loaded onto a single memory card (while the votes on each machine are still kept as individual counts) so that at the end of the day, when votes are counted at the Courthouse, the folks there need to deal with only 66 cards. This would save time, and that would save money, when it comes to that final tabulation.

A last objection (here) is the perceived problem we would face in the case of a challenged election. It is feared that in such a case, the paper trail needed to make an alternate count would not be available.

This is simply not the case. There is a paper trail kept by each machine, closed in a canister within the machine, sealed with a numbered seal that is tracked on separate forms at each precinct and for each machine in that precinct.

To avoid the time-consuming and nerve wracking process of “scrolling” those canisters out and reading the fine print of the votes on that machine, the technology exists to convert every single vote on that machine to a more traditional paper ballot that can then be hand counted.

A challenged election, difficult under any circumstances, could be handled very well with the new machines. That generating paper ballots from the electronic voting machines is difficult is true enough. However, when considered in terms of a cost-benefit analysis and weighing the likelihood of such a contest, we would suggest that any risk involved in staying with the new technology is well within reasonable limits.

We close by saying again that the Harrison County Democratic Executive strongly opposes any changes in our voting process at this time. We encourage you to tell your Supervisor and Election Commissioner that you agree.
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The following is a report on the May 07 HCDEC monthly meeting where a final decision was made on the voting machine rollback

At Saturday's meeting of the Harrison County Democratic Executive Committee a controversial motion to have the HCDEC file a complaint with the Department of Justice over minority rights violations in Harrison County's Board of Supervisors decision to step backwards to a more antiquated form of voting. Department of Justice approval is required for any changes in the voting process. After extended debate and by a split decision the HCDEC voted not to file with the Department of Justice.