MERCER COUNTY Officials to select machine committee

The county would like to get another computerized voting system in the future.
By MARY GRZEBIENIAK
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
MERCER, Pa. -- Members of a committee to determine the best voting machine for the county will be named Thursday when Mercer County commissioners meet.
On Tuesday, at the chief clerk's meeting, Commissioner Michele Brooks announced names of two committee members -- Dr. Thomas Rookey, county director of registration and elections, and Patty Napolitan, an employee in the county elections office who is familiar with voting machines.
In addition, a representative from the county's computer department, Area Agency on Aging, one each from the Democratic and Republican parties, and one representing the disabled will sit on the committee. The ease of voting for elderly and disabled residents has been a major concern.
Machines decertified
New voting machines are needed in the county because $900,000 worth of Unilect touch-screen voting machines the county bought in 2001 were decertified in April, with Pennsylvania Secretary of State Pedro Cortes saying, in effect, they were too inaccurate to be used.
The state paid for the county to use a rented optical scan system with paper ballots in the May primary election and is expected to pay for the same system to be used in the November election.
For the long term, the county wants to get back to computerized machine voting, which is more efficient and produces results faster than paper systems, county officials said.
Officials cannot buy a new system, however, until both the federal and state governments decide which computerized voting systems they find acceptable. Commissioners also want the state to pay for replacement machines since the state first certified, then decertified, the Unilect system.
In addition, the state had agreed to provide a large percentage of reimbursement for the original system, but state officials have not announced whether they will pay any portion of the cost of a new one.
No longer in use
Mercer County stopped using its old voting machines after the November 2004 general election. An error in coding the machines shut down voting machines in the 4th Congressional District and thousands of additional votes were lost due to confusing on-screen instructions.
After that election, commissioners named a committee to determine what went wrong.
After having 10 public meetings, the committee concluded the machines were confusing, the election law was not followed and that poor planning, lack of communication among commissioners and other factors contributed to the problems.
In the wake of that election, then Elections Director Jim Bennington resigned. Rookey, who was hired in February to replace him, has been working to improve the election process.