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Why is legislation so important in THIS session?

February 10, 2005 -- Verified Voting New Mexico, Bob Stearns

It is urgent to get this session of the state legislature to adopt a law mandating paper trails for all electronic voting machines. This is because NM Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron has strongly supported usage of the paperless voting machines now in operation in our state and has not publicly endorsed the use of voting machines that produce voter-verifiable paper ballots. The two electronic voting machines purchased in recent years by NM counties , with Secretary of State certification, are the ES&S iVotronic and the Sequoia AVC Edge touch screen machines, neither of which provides a paper trail.

Bernalillo County, our state’s largest voting jurisdiction, for several months has been considering requesting funds from the State Board of Finance to buy 1,100 new voting machines to replace its existing push-button machines. The estimated cost is $8 million. Other NM counties are also planning purchases. If these machines continue to be paperless, their acquisition will be a major setback in our campaign to establish transparent, accurate and trustworthy voting systems in New Mexico.

By state law, voting machines must be federally certified. The Secretary of State must approve which federally certified machines are used in New Mexico. Vendors can apply for certifying their machines only in odd years, 2005 being the latest. Currently, only machines produced by ES&S and Sequoia are certified for New Mexico. An older Sequoia AVC machine and the push-button Shouptronic have been grandfathered in. No touch screen machines capable of producing paper trails have been certified by the Secretary of State.

Further strengthening the impetus to buy new voting machines is the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which provides additional funding to states for improving their voting systems. HAVA funds are added to the state’s Voting Machine Revolving Fund, supervised by Secretary of State Vigil-Giron, which, with the approval of the State Board of Finance, makes no-interest 10-year loans to counties for buying machines. The 2001 Legislature doubled the Fund to $4 million. Counties can also use their own funds for machine purchase.

Deadline for using HAVA funds is 2006, though the exact date of that year is still to be decided. The National Association of Counties is urging Congress to extend the 2006 deadline, until electronic voting machines are certified to modern standards and provide paper trails. The NAC fears that if counties rush to buy paperless machines in order not to lose HAVA funding, they will face litigation from civic groups charging waste of taxpayer money.