Thursday, June 17, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Voting machines may cost county $12 million
By ED VOGEL
REVIEW-JOURNAL CAPITAL BUREAU
CARSON CITY -- Clark County may have to spend as much as $12 million by 2006 to replace 2,100 older electronic voting machines that cannot be upgraded to allow printing of each ballot cast, Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said Wednesday.
Lomax made the comments in a telephone interview moments after the Legislature's Interim Finance Committee agreed to set aside $7 million in federal funds to purchase new electronic voting machines. That is expected to cover purchase of Sequoia Pacific touch-screen machines throughout the state.
The committee also agreed to let the secretary of state spend as much as $4 million on a statewide voter registration system.
New voting machines include vote verifiable printing devices that let voters see a ballot to ensure their votes were tallied correctly.
Clark County already has purchased 700 of these newer "Edge" machines, but also has 2,100 older machines that are not capable of printing each ballot. These machines were purchased with county funds.
Lomax said he needs about two Edge machines, each costing around $3,000, to replace each of the older machines.
"I am not confident the state can cover all our costs," Lomax said. "Even if we got all the $7 million it isn't going to be enough."
When Secretary of State Dean Heller decided all counties in Nevada should use touch-screen machines last year, he and Lomax initially thought the older Sequoia machines used in Clark County for the last decade could be retrofitted with paper trail devices.
Consequently, Clark County was given only $650,000 of the $9.6 million in federal funds then available for voter machine purchases. The county was the only one in the state using electronic touch-screen voting machines.
But Lomax said he has had numerous discussions with Sequoia officials and they are not certain they can retrofit the older machines with the devices. He added he notified Heller and Clark County officials of the potential problem six months ago.
Heller has given Clark County until the elections in 2006 to upgrade the older machines.
