Shelby County Election Commission discussing changes during fallow election year

Jan 19, 2013 (The Commercial Appeal - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- With frustrating voting snafus behind it and no large elections scheduled until May 2014, the Shelby County Election Commission has begun taking some steps it hopes will build voter confidence, increase efficiency and decrease hassles associated with voting.

At a committee meeting on Wednesday, commissioners unanimously approved a motion from Norma Lester, a Democratic commissioner, to recommend purchasing technology that could greatly reduce lines during early voting, while at the same time upgrading its old DOS-based voter registration software.

Lester's motion also recommends exploring steps that would need to be taken to replace the current touch-screen voting machines that lack a paper trail with optical scanning machines in which a voter makes selection on paper ballots that are then fed into electronic machines that tabulate votes.

The commission is expected to officially approve the recommendation at Wednesday afternoon's regular monthly meeting.

"We believe that the more problems we can fix, the greater confidence voters will have in our ability to hold fair elections," Robert Meyers, the commission's Republican chairman, wrote in an email. "We also believe that the less problems we have the more transparent we can be. In particular, if we can more easily provide candidates and parties the information they want about voters from the purchase of a new system, that will help with confidence.

"We also believe the faster we can process new registrations, address changes and the like, the easier is will be for voters." Elections Systems and Software, one of the commission's vendors, proposed a $500,000 contract for upgrading the registration software and for purchasing 120 electronic poll books (EPBs) for early voting sites. That money would come out of the commission's budget, Meyers said.

George Monger, another Democratic commissioner, wrote in an email that adding the EPBs would "nearly eliminate the long wait times" at early voting.

But the primary voting problems last year involved many thousands of voters given wrong ballots for some races. The new registration software could help avoid that in the future, although a state audit cited poor management in planning for how to reassign voters after legislative redistricting.

Steve Ross, who ran for county commission and who monitors the election process closely, said he remains skeptical that the current management, led by Administrator of Elections Richard Holden, is capable of regaining the trust of voters. In September, the commission voted unanimously to suspend Holden for three days without pay and put him on six months probation.

"While I feel that the discussion of these changes are generally positive, I think they also are a distraction from the clear management and commission oversight failures that led to the problems with the ballots in August -- problems that I don't think have been properly addressed," Ross wrote in an email.

Ross and others expressed enthusiasm about the possibility of optical scanning voting machines, although commission staff on Wednesday indicated to commissioners the process of replacing machines is so complicated it may not be possible to complete by the 2014 cycle.

Commissioners believe funding for new machines would be covered by available federal funds.

The commission also discussed eliminating precinct voting altogether by moving to a "convenience voting" model or a "voting center" model.

Convenience voting "is like early voting on steroids," Meyers said, with 45 to 60 voting sites spread throughout the county for the entire voting cycle, including on election day. A voter's ballot could be accessed at any of the sites.

The voting center model envisions the regular number of early-voting sites, about 20, but on election day expanding to 45 to 60 sites spread throughout the county.

Going to either model would require the state legislature making adjustments in current election law.

Ross said the ideas intrigue him and could work. However, "the execution is where I start having concerns" because he is unsure the commission could be "equitable" in determining where to place the sites.

Meyers said on Friday he spoke with Shelby County Democratic Party chairman Van Turner to emphasize the commission's desire to involve everyone, regardless of partisan affiliation, with helping decide what changes should be made during this fallow year for elections.

___ (c)2013 The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, Tenn.) Visit The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, Tenn.) at www.commercialappeal.com Distributed by MCT Information Services

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