Voting machines aging but have plenty of life, caretaker says
Published 7:35 pm Thursday, October 22, 2015
- Voting machines aging but have plenty of life, caretaker says
ATLANTA – Voters will walk up to familiar touch screens early next month and indicate whether they believe the city of Milledgeville and Baldwin County would be better as one.
While the politics surrounding this decision are heated, the voting process is likely to be a more mundane affair.
“They’re all working fine, and I don’t have an issue with them,” said Probate Judge Todd Blackwell, referring to the county’s 113 voting machines.
A new report questions how much longer that will remain the case.
The Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute based at New York University, concluded that many of the country’s election machines are at risk of failing.
The study identified 43 states – including Georgia – that use machines that are at least 10 years old. More than a quarter of the country uses machines that are 15 years old.
Generally the machines are believed to have a lifespan of 10 to 20 years, with a decade of use more realistic for most systems, according to the report. The study found that “the majority of machines in use today are either perilously close to or exceed these estimates.”
The longer governments wait to buy replacements, the greater the risk of “failures and crashes, which can lead to long lines and lost votes,” the report warned.
Most of Georgia’s 27,000 voting machines have been in use since the state launched its uniform voting system in 2002. The machines, which run on Windows 2000, are no longer manufactured.
While the state bought the original machines with federal Help America Vote Act funds, the individual counties paid to add machines to their inventory. The cost is as much as $3,000 per unit.
But that doesn’t mean the systems are on the brink of failure, said Merle King, who heads the Center for Election Systems at Kennesaw State University.
Think of it, he said, as “a 13-year-old car that’s only been driven five times a year.”
King said he’s also curious to know what innovations could improve the voting process.
After all, the machines essentially perform two basic functions.
“They capture voter intent, and then they tabulate results. They don’t do anything else,” he said. “The fact that they’re old, that’s not that bad of a thing because voting machines have been doing the same thing since 1895 with the first lever machines.”
King’s staff tends to the state’s voting equipment and works with Georgia’s 159 counties to ensure the machines are properly maintained and ready when voters need them. The manufacturer makes the needed repairs.
King and his staff just wrapped up a statewide review that meant visiting each county and testing its equipment.
All said, 98 percent of Georgia’s machines checked out fine.
The remaining machines – about 500 – are being repaired. The most common issue is usually related to the case; much of the damage to the devices is done when they are transported.
King’s mission is to give Secretary of State Brian Kemp a two-year notice when he observes a decline in performance. It will likely take that long to switch to a new system, he said.
That warning hasn’t come. King said he believes the machines will fare well through next year’s presidential election, and at least through the 2018 election cycle. At that point, he’ll reassess the situation.
But, when people ask how long the system will last, King said he tells them “forever.” It’s the mindset that he’s attempted to drill into election officials across the state in hopes of milking as much life out of the machines as possible.
That philosophy has seeped down to Lowndes County, for example, where about a third of voters are expected to participate in the Nov. 3 municipal elections. Early voting is already underway.
“If you do what you’re supposed to, things can last indefinitely,” said Deb Cox, supervisor of elections.
The county has about 300 of the electronic, direct-recording machines, as well as 74 express poll books that speed up the voter check-in process and six scanners that handle absentee paper ballots.
It’s unusual for even one or two of those to be sent out for repairs for each election, Cox said. When something breaks, it’s usually the legs or a part of a case that needs mending.
The software and electronic components, she said, aren’t normally the issue.
Likewise, in Baldwin County, where as many as half of the registered voters are expected to weigh in on the unification question, election officials aren’t fretting over their machines.
All Blackwell knows is that his voting machines and other equipment are in good shape today, with early voting underway and Election Day on Nov. 3. Any malfunctions – as few as there have been so far – are usually “smoked out” during testing, he said.
Jill Nolin covers the Georgia Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach her at jnolin@cnhi.com.