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Team 4: Allegheny County Switches Voting Machines ... Again

POSTED: 4:51 pm EDT April 5, 2006
UPDATED: 5:30 pm EDT April 5, 2006

The following report by Team 4 investigator Jim Parsons first aired on Channel 4 Action News at 5 p.m. on April 5, 2006.

County executive Dan Onorato is firing one voting machine supplier, hiring another and alerting you, the voter, that the primary will be a "bare bones" scenario.

The machine that Onorato wanted to use for voting in the future was manufactured by Sequoia Voting Systems.

He liked how voters see the entire ballot at one time.

But the state certification team didn't like the software bugs they found in it.

"They have serious concerns with the Sequoia system as a whole. The system as presented to them will be denied certification," Onorato said.

So, with the primary election just six weeks away, Onorato this time chose a machine already approved in 22 other Pennsylvania counties -- the one made by ES&S of Nebraska.

The county will eventually have three or four of the machines at each polling place.

But in May, there will only be one in each precinct -- with optical scanners as a backup.

"If the line should happen to get real long because of long lines, you could then use the optical scan. It goes into a secure box. It gets counted at the end of the night. And this would only be for the May election," Onorato said.

A group that opposes touch screen machines said ES&S's promise to deliver enough machines is already falling apart elsewhere.

"ES&S is having trouble delivering these machines. Butler County and several other counties have ordered them and they're not getting enough. We need 1,300 and they need maybe you know, a couple of hundred, and they're not getting those," said Collin Lynch, a doctoral candidate in computer science at the University of Pittsburgh.

The ES&S iVotronics also caused problems in Beaumont, Texas, last month when it added an extra 5,000 votes.

And County Manager Jim Flynn got an earful from a disability rights attorney who said the new machine isn't compliant with new federal regulations.

"We're now in the 11th hour. You get free federal money to buy accessible machines and you're buying machines that aren't accessible? I don't understand this," said Paul O'Hanlon of the Disabilities Law Project.

The county said the ES&S machine has all of the required federal and state certifications.

The total price tag is just under $12 million, a bill being paid with federal grants.

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