Voting day is just around the corner. Hi
everybody and welcome to The County Seat I'm
Chad Booth and today we are going to talk
about the elections and voting machines just on
the eve of the new elections. They have come a
long way and are much different faster more
secure than they used to be but are they worth
it. Let's start with a little history about voting
machines.
The time to make our voices heard by voting in
local elections is here again but even as people
prepare to head to their polling place or mail in
the ballot, change is in the air for Utah voters.
"For a lot of counties, this will be the last time
they use the touchscreen machines that a lot of
people are familiar with, and the equipment
they use to process the ballots."
After more than 10 years many Utah counties
will be seeing a change to how their votes are
counted on election day as government entities
across the state take steps to update voting
technology to be faster, more secure, and
easier to use.
Many will ask why Utah is bothering to update
election machines after the state has had a very
successful shift in the past few years to voting
by mail, but it is in part because of that shift
that new machines have become necessary.
"Those machines and the equipment we had, is
not meant for the vote by mail volume that we
have today. As we know 22 of 29 counties have
gone vote by mail and by 2018 over 90% of
Utah will be in a vote by mail county."
The current machines in Utah are over a decade
old at this point and were brought in after the
infamous hanging chad problems in the early
2000's elections. Hanging and pregnant chads
made many of the votes cast in states like
Florida questionable during an already very
close presidential race. A system that could get
straightforward answers was needed.
That's when Utah's current touchscreen
enabled voting machines came into play. They
made the process more straightforward and
provided clear and quick results.
However, now that much of the state votes by
mail these same machines are actually slowing
down delivery of those results.
"Part of that was, you know we have a machine
that is a one sheet scan. Just juut juut with the
ballots and that's just not going to do it for a lot
of the larger counties."
The new machines are going to cost the state
and counties a fair amount of money but not
nearly as much as the previous upgrade cost the
state.
"A decade ago we spend about $30 million
dollars purchasing and implementing the
equipment. We are excited today because we
know it's going to be just about a third as much
as what it was ten years ago."
In our panel discussion we'll dive deeper into
how the new machines will affect Utah Counties
and voters across the state. For the County Seat
I'm Malia Stringham.
Hopefully we have laid some good groundwork
for you to understand voting machines and
what the state is considering. We are going to
dive into those details and talk with three
experts about voting machines and Utah's
future when we return on the County Seat.
Welcome back to The County Seat we are
talking about election machines and joining us
for our panel discussion and part of the election
machine story here in Utah are a couple of
clerks who have to deal with them on the
receiving end Ricky Hatch Weber County Clerk
and Clerk Auditor and Marla Young from Box
Elder County Clerk first time to our show
welcome Marla and Mark Thomas who is the
director of the elections in the Lt. Governor's
office at least for a couple of weeks.
For a couple more weeks and moving on after
that.
It seems like he is going to walk out of here and
tap dance in the hall apparently you have
enjoyed your work.
I have its been great working with the elections
clerks as well.
I will tell you that both of them sighed a
disappointment when I said what you think
about Mark leaving. You are a very popular
person.
That's so nice of them, thank you.
I have mentioned to a few people that we were
going to do a show on election machines and
the fact the state is in this process of upgrading
and they are going wait a minute I thought we
had all move to paper ballots why are we even
discussion election machines. So being a viewer
advocate I want to start our conversation and
toss it out there why are we looking at paper
machines when everybody is trying to do mail in
ballots now?
Well a couple of things, the equipment that we
have now is over ten years old and it was meant
for just a small amount of paper ballots so if you
picture someone hand feeding a tabulator and
all night on elections night trying to get those
results out as quickly as possible well ten years
ago we had probably this much paper ballots
but now as 22 counties have gone by mail over
90% of the voting population is going to be vote
by mail Huge numbers of paper ballots and
those have to be tabulated quickly and so that
is an upgrade there. So this is something that
would never even cross my mind is that paper
ballots still require voting machines and that
puts an entirely different spin on this.
IT does and as well as security too if you think
about over the last ten years where we need to
go with security but with the technology now
that we know that is out there there is just high
speed scanners that will tabulate them really
quick and we do know in particular in the last
presidential election there was a concern with
how slow really the results were coming out
after election night and this will help certainly
with that and we just need to upgrade anyway
and with technology is a long time and our
equipment is over ten years old.
So for you two who are on the end to having to
run these darn things on election night what
has been the drawback of the current system?
I would say it has not been able to be upgraded
and our servers are 12 years old and the system
is no an old antiquated using system and so it
has not advanced with the times.
So am I right in understanding that the current
machines that are out there are not really
internet connected.
Correct.
So I guess that takes the wind out of the sales of
the president elect who said the elections were
are rigged the systems have been hacked it
would be pretty hard to hack the current
system.
Oh it would be really difficult you have to get
physical access to each voting machine to try to
infect it or somehow hack into it and with the
audits that are done pre and post-election and
all the other security measures it is really
difficult to do that. Let's say you accomplished
all that you got one machine. Now you have to
go to all the other machines in all 29 counties
and try to change the outcome of the election.
It's just not likely.
How many machines do you have in Weber
County?
650
180, we are smaller.
I was just thinking there are 2 corners in Utah
and between the 2 of you have have 800
machines I guess that would make it a little
difficult.
And on election day generally only records
about 120 votes so you could theoretically
impact one machine but those and even those
machines are sealed with sealed security seals
that are checked before during and after
election day so we would know if something
happened.
Excellent so help me go through the genesis of
this a little bit because I was mentioning before
we sat down it just does not seem very long ago
that I was sticking the punch card in and getting
that little needle out and flipping the pages and
that was the voting machine. Has that really
been more than 10 years that I have been doing
that?
It has.
Back in 2005 and 2006 is when we switched and
this was a lot in part of the problem that
happened down in Florida and as a nation
moved more towards touch screen machines
and made direct recording devices. DRE's and
now with some of the concerns and the trend
nationwide is actually reverting back to paper
as a lot of people place more comfort in the
paper so it has come back.
Is that part of what mail in ballots become so
popular I know that participation has gone up a
lot, has it not?
It has the voter participation has gone up really
well particularly in these smaller municipal
elections. But I think people do have comfort in
a paper process and it seems that it is helping
with voter participation and as well as helping
voters to become more informed as they get
their ballot in front of them were able to study
the issues look at the candidates and I think
people have really appreciated that.
I've gone a minute over on first segment sorry
to you folks we will take a quick break on
county seat and we will be right back with our
discussion on election machines.
Welcome back to The County Seat we are
talking about election machines and the fact
that many of Utah's counties are switching and
that leaves us with the first question. Not
everybody is switching. What are the primary
drivers for your two counties upgrading?
Well primarily we want and good secure
system. But for us its speed probably one of the
biggest. Speed and flexibility the ballot of our
new design system is phenomenal. It will give
us a lot of options as far as speed we are going
to see in the area of processing ballots between
a 500% and a 2000% increase in productivity in
speed in process. It used to take us 300 man
hours to run for example Novembers
presidential election 300 man hours to process
all those ballots with the new system it will take
us 15 just the technology has advanced that
much.
As Mark was pointing out it was not much of an
exaggeration to actually put a mail in paper
ballot into the old system you had to manually
feed it into the machine?
One at a time.
How did it know to recognize the print form of
the ballot is it programmable so it knows where
to look for the little mark?
Each ballot has timing marks right around the
edges that can orient the system so it know
where to look for the marks.
What was involved in finding the new system
and getting everybody to agree on what they
were going to do?
Well under the statute it's the Lt. Governor's
office that puts together a committee we had a
lot of county clerks we had some people from
the technology sector as well as the folks from
the disability community to come together and
draft a request for proposal and we completed
that earlier this year and we released it and at
the route the summer we received a responses
we had five vendors respond and they came up
to the Capitol and demonstrated we had a lot of
people come up from the public and gave us
their feedback but ultimately we got to the
conclusion through the procurement process
that there was just one company was going to
fit our needs the best and that was ES&S.
We talked about security and how hard it would
be to hack in and seeing people are concerned
about that with the old system how is the new
system if it is all integrated how do you prevent
that from happening?
Well a lot of it is the process and procedures
that they have in place. Ricky mentioned that
tamper proof seals and different things like
that. ES&S has some of the latest technology
that is able to really do a good job in providing
auditing so that we can insure that if something
does happen we are able to reconcile that or
be able to find that later what is going on here.
There are some of the things that our current
system does not do as well so that is why you
talk about technology being over ten years old
this is really exciting for us.
So are the new machine going to be hooking in
on line at the time they are on line taking votes
or are they still separate and off line?
They are separate and off line.
Still separate and off line in fact there is two
factor authentication that occurs at the
machine at the polling places which is a good
strong security they will not be connected via
Wi-Fi or cable or anything like that as well as
the central tabulator at the county offices those
are still in hardened networks not connected to
the internet.
So it is secure that way. So you have to
physically take the new machine and get them
ready and clear and sealed like an audit check
on them take them out place them at the
polling place and then bring them back under
armed guards?
Well we always have two workers at the same
time that any time a machine is handled or
moved we have 2 workers where they are
stored under a secure location that the
interesting thing is that those machines are
tested right before they go out and then sealed
shut and the first thing the poll workers do in
the morning is they verify that the seals have
not been broken and that ensures a good chain
of command to make sure that those machines
have not been tampered with and the same
process happens at the end of election night
when those results are brought back.
So for quicker results what do you see some of
the draw backs and problems that may come
around in the future? Okay I will pick an
example on a national election and they say
they should not releasing results from the
eastern states while the western polls are still
open do you see that as a problem intrastate as
opposed to interstate with the new technology?
It's always a concern at least with the Lt.
Governor's office if you have 29 counties and
they are releasing results by a different
schedule so I know we try to ensure that there
is some consistency there but it is difficult
because people want results and we cannot
hold someone back that wants to release
results while waiting for another county and so
it is just part of the process that we go through
in preparing for an election day and all of the
training that we do to ensure those get out
quickly but overall I do not see it as a major
issue we have done a pretty good job over the
last decade in getting results our as quickly as
we can with the new system of going all vote by
mail for almost 90% of the counties it changes
so we have had to make some adjustments and
that is why I think we have learned from the
2016 election hey there are some things we
need to do including getting some new
equipment to help speed up the process.
No results anywhere happen until obviously the
polls are closed and the machines go in. Do all
the counties close their polls at the same time?
They do.
They all close the polls at 8 pm on election night
but some of them may have some lines and that
is where it gets a little tricky sometimes
because of Salt Lake County for example has a
few huge vote centers and if they have some
lines but another Utah county is released some
results we try to minimize those types of issues
but Utah really has not experienced that much
because now that we go more vote by mail
there will be less lines at the polling location. I
think we are moving in the right direction we
learn every election as there are different things
that come up.
Would you ever go back to sticking the cards in
and having my name sake show up on different
ballots, little Chads here and there.
Well I am going to ask you Marla, you have
been quite.
We have had 5 amazing vendors come and
show us what they have out there and I'm all
for change and anything that can make my life a
little easier and a little more efficient. I think
we have a great option and I do not know about
those hanging Chads and dimple Chads and all
that kind of stuff I think we are heading the
right way.
We are going to come up with a new name with
an inconclusive ballot Mark on the electronic
ones, can we get away from Chad.
Harry maybe.
We are going to take a quick break and come
with some final thoughts and conclusions here
on the County Seat we are talking about
elections and ballots and voting machines and
you should make note of this and plan on
engaging us on our social media you can go to
thecountyseat.tv or county seat Facebook page.
We'll be right back.
Welcome back to The County Seat we are
talking about election machines and the
upcoming election we have gone through all the
pros and cons there is one potential pro or con
that we have not looked at. How much is this
going to cost to update the machines again?
Ten years ago, I can tell you it costs 30 million
dollars and so we are excited after going
through this particular procurement that we
found that the cost is actually going to be about
a third of that so we are looking at about 10 to
12 million dollar range depending on how many
machines the counties get so things are looking
really good as far as the overall costs.
So the general thought Mark is if it is less can it
be as secure?
Well part of the reason that is less is not
because they did not do a good job on security
its less because we are going to a more
potential zed system with less polling locations
you don't need as many touch screens
machines that are out there and as well having
the big machines that scan those ballots really
fast you don't have to have all of those at all the
polling locations you can have a centralized one
and so they certainly did not skimp on the
security side that was top of mind for the
committee as they reviewed each of the
vendors.
So from the county side Marla did you get any
push back about voting machines did you get
calls saying why are we wasting money on new
machines the other ones look just fine.
Not yet.
I just put a seed in someone else's mind erase
that if you live in Box Elder County, okay?
If you are going form 300 man hours to 15 man
hours are you going to save the costs of those
machines over a decade do you think?
Yes, it will definitely help. The thing is its still
expensive for Weber County it will be over
800,000 dollars over the next ten years.
Counties struggle to pay for these but we really
need help from the state to help subsidize some
of these payments. It was easy ten years ago
because federal government gave the state a
lot of money and we are able to spend a lot of
money and get these new machines now that
money is not there so I think between the state
and the counties helping out each other we will
be in a good position to buy the equipment we
need and maintain it over the next year.
Doesn't that cost savings roll up hill to the Lt.
Governor's office?
It really does not the counties are responsible
for the elections they pay for almost all of it and
we help out on the voter registration system
but very little comes up to the state.
Are those machines easier to audit?
They will be much easier to audit and that
accountability will be something we will be
liking as well.
So if you have message for somebody we just a
week away from municipal elections most
people have their mail in ballots you have filled
them in I just sent me in to Sherrie Swenson.
What is your advice about the important of
municipal elections?
Well look a lot of times the municipal
candidates are going to have a much more
impact on your daily life than some of the
bigger offices and we have a lot of valid issues
as well that are out there and on this election
and I encourage for people to vote.utah.gov
you can see what candidates are on your ballots
what issues are on your ballot and if you have
not received your ballot double check with the
county clerk and see if something is going on
and get it in before election day it has to be
postmarked before election day.
Actually been to the post office on the 7th of this
year, right?
No the 6th, November 7the is Election Day.
Thank you for joining us on the county seat.
County government is where your life happens
be part of the solution see you next week.
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