Push Now for Senate Paper Ballot Bill

From Paul Stokes, United Voters of NM:
There were a number of supporters for and opponents of SB 295 present in the gallery at yesterday's hearing in the Senate Rules Committee. SB 295 is the paper ballot bill introduced by Senator Lopez.

Supporters and opponents were divided more or less along party lines. Supporters spoke mostly of benefits of paper ballots for assuring vote counting accuracy, providing for voter verifiability, transparency, voter confidence, and similar topics. Opponents said that implementing and using paper ballots and optical scan vote counters would be difficult, expensive and subject to falsification using techniques such as ballot box stuffing, and would remove discretionary power for county clerks to do the best thing for their constituents.

Supporters represented a broad range of individuals and groups, and included a number of election reform activists as well as other concerned citizens. Opponents identified themselves mostly with Republicans, but included some County Clerks or their representatives, and the vice president of sales and a lobbyist for Sequoia Voting Systems.

The Sequoia representatives said, among other things, that paper ballot systems cost 30% more, that opscans suffered a high undervote rate, and that the disability community was not adequately served by the AutoMARK, and might result in lawsuits.  As you may know, these claims are not true, although lawsuits can never be discounted.

Regarding expensiveness, Jaime Diaz from the Bernalillo County Clerk's office claimed that the twelve early voting sites in Bernalillo County would require some 4 hundred optical scan machines to handle all of the ballot styles in use in the county during a general election, and some 8 hundred machines for primaries (twice as many because of two parties).  He did not discuss other possible solutions, such as transporting ballots from early voting sites to central scanners. Ernie Marquez, in his role as Bureau of Elections chief and as the expert supporting Senator Lopez, did not necessarily agree with Diaz' claim, but didn't dispute it either.

The discussion that followed consisted mostly of Senator Duran asking questions of Senator Lopez or Ernie Marquez about the estimated cost to the state of going to the paper ballot system, considering various uncertainties in the number of opscans needed.  One variable of great importance is whether it will be acceptable to use opscans of various types currently available in the state, especially the large number of Sequoia Insights. As an example of the tenor of the discussion, she also pointed out a problem that recently occurred in Florida with the AutoMARK ballot marker.  She did not describe the details, but it turns out that the audio system of the AutoMARK cannot notify voters of undervotes on multi-sheet ballots (although it can for one- or  two-sided single sheet ballots) during the ballot review, although it does notify the voter while he/she is voting. Florida is confident this problem can be resolved, "and fully expects ES&S to ultimately complete this certification  effort" (Florida Department of State Division of Elections).

The obvious intent of the questions from Senator Duran was to show the difficulty of implementing the paper ballot system, and was not to enlighten the Committee regarding its implementation.

Just before the hearing recessed, Senator Ortiz y Pino pointed out that, contrary to what was said during the earlier discussion, the New Mexico representatives of the disabled community indicated no concerns with using the AutoMARK.  He further said that the real issue was accurate counting of the vote, not details of implementation and cost.

The meeting recessed about 10:15 AM because of urgent business on the Senate floor. It will re-convene today (Tuesday) morning at 8:30 AM in Room 321. There may not be time for this new schedule to be documented on the Legislature web-site.

The large number of concerned citizens that were present, many of whom voiced their support for paper ballots, was an important indication to the Senators of the public's interest in this matter.  Please do what you can to attend the meeting this morning or call members of the Senate Rules Committee.