Reply #17: PA: Card-scanner system is choice in Chesco

[rumpel]

philly.com Philadelphia Inquirer

Posted on Wed, Mar. 22, 2006
Card-scanner system is choice in Chesco
County officials faced a deadline to pick a new means of voting. It drew tempered enthusiasm.
By Nancy Petersen
Inquirer Staff Writer
After months of debate and what seemed to be an endless e-mail campaign by voter activists, Chester County officials have picked a new voting system that uses paper cards and electronic scanners.

The system, much like the one used for standardized tests, was approved by a unanimous vote of the county's Board of Elections to meet new federal standards for voting machines.

Voters will fill in circles next to each candidate's name, and then the ballot will be fed into a high-speed electronic scanner, which counts the results.

The system provides the paper trail sought by some local activists, who said a purely electronic system could not be made tamper-proof.

The card machines will be supplemented with a single electronic touch-screen machine in each polling place for blind and disabled voters.

"This is not a perfect solution, but it is the best one available to us right now," said Chester County Court Judge Jacqueline Cody, who was appointed to the elections board last Thursday. The activists who pushed for a paper-based system expressed partial satisfaction with the unexpected decision.

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/states/pennsylvania/counties/montgomery_county/14155008.htm