PA. VOTER REGISTRATION New system has officials wary of accuracy

SURE replaces separate voter registration systems most counties maintain.
HARRISBURG (AP) -- With about three months to go until the state's primary election, some county officials remain concerned about whether all voters can be counted accurately as the state completes its rollout of a new statewide electronic voter registry.
Officials with the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania outlined the organization's 2004 legislative agenda last week and said there are several lingering concerns surrounding the implementation of the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, also known as the SURE system. The state's primary is April 27.
"We have supported the system in concept ... however, we've been experiencing some problems with the system's capacity," said Douglas Hill, the association's executive director.
About SURE
Mandated by state and federal law, SURE is designed to make it easier for county officials to electronically cross-check and update voter registration information by sharing that information. It will replace the separate voter registration systems that most counties maintain.
The system has been launched in six counties since the testing phase began with last year's May primary. The Department of State is adding the remaining 61 counties over the next several weeks, and all are expected to be on the system around mid-March, department spokesman Brian McDonald said.
Elections Director Deena Dean of Bucks County, which joined the system along with Allegheny County for the November general election, said officials reviewed a vast list of problems during a four-hour meeting in December with the state and representatives of Accenture Ltd. The New York firm was awarded a $19.5 million contract to develop the system.
"The No. 1 issue is the speed of the system. We are not able to process our work as efficiently as we did in the past," said Dean, whose county is home to more than 420,000 registered voters. "I consider that we have taken 10 steps backward with the new system."
For example, registrars must use more keystrokes to complete certain tasks, such as changing the address of a voter who has moved to another town within the same county. The old computer system required only three keystrokes, while the SURE system requires 12, Dean said.
Other problems
In the four other counties that used the system for last year's primaries, officials encountered problems such as scanners to make digital copies of voters' signature that could not read blue or red ink.
Regis Young, director of elections in Butler County, said those problems have been fixed, but he agreed with Dean's assessment that the system can be cumbersome.
"After a year of being on the system, you'd think it would be no-questions-asked, and you could work out your problems and get what you need. It's not that way with this system, and the reason for it is it's not a user-friendly system," Young said.
For his part, McDonald said the department believes the system ran efficiently in the general election because a help desk that was available for troubleshooting "didn't receive too many calls at all."
Secretary of State Pedro A. Cortes is taking another look at the system, however, through a quality assurance review being conducted by InfoSentry Services Inc., a Raleigh, N.C.-based technology consulting firm.
InfoSentry will determine how well the Sure system complies with the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 and state law, and will also evaluate the system's readiness for the primary election, according to a Dec. 17 letter Cortes sent to county officials.
Hill said his group is eagerly awaiting the results of the study, which McDonald said should be available relatively soon, although he did not specify when.
"Does the SURE system meet the bare-bones requirement of the statute? It may, but will it meet the need of everyone who participates in the process? We would argue that in its current configuration, it doesn't," Hill said.