High-speed ballot scanners bought to expedite vote count
The Board of Supervisors approved a request by the Riverside County Registrar of Voters on Tuesday to purchase four additional high-speed ballot processors that will expedite the vote count during the Nov. 1 general election.
“These four machines will help us finish three hours earlier on election night,” Registrar Rebecca Spencer told the board. “The benefits will mainly come in November, not during the June primary. We have a two-card ballot in November.”
The four Optech 400C scanners will complement 13 already in the county inventory, according to Spencer. Each scanner’s unit price is $55,000. However, maintenance, setup and delivery costs were priced into the purchase, which will total $228,000, according to registrar’s documents.
The devices are refurbished, not new, and hence cost slightly less. They’ll be acquired from Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems under a sole source provider contract. No other company provides equipment compatible with the county’s voting system, so there were no bids solicited, according to the registrar.
Spencer noted that San Bernardino County has 16 Optech scanners and Santa Clara County has 18, but “both counties have less registered voters than Riverside County.”
The Optech units are advertised as scanning 400 ballots per minute, but don’t usually make that speed because of how ballots are configured, according to election officials. Of the county’s 943,402 registered voters in November 2012, 669,627 — roughly 71 percent — turned out to vote by mail or at the polls during that presidential election.
The county has operated the manual ballot scanning system in lieu of an electronic one since 2008, after then-Secretary of State Debra Bowen de-certified electronic voting statewide based on an investigation that the security firewalls in some e-voting machines could be compromised. Bowen’s action effectively rendered the county’s stock of 3,700 Sequoia AVC Edge voting machines useless. The units, which cost $30 million to purchase and maintain between 2000 and 2008, are now locked up in a Riverside-area warehouse.
“Today we’re investing in a legacy system. It’s older and mechanical,” board Chairman John Benoit said of the Optech scanners. “I’d like us to move back to electronic voting. But the state has put us squarely in the back of the bus. It’s time to make a visit to the secretary of state to see where we can move legislation to bring us back to the 21st century.”
