County votes yes for new balloting system.

Byline: Randi Bjornstad The Register-Guard

Without the benefit of confetti, noisemakers or champagne, Lane County voters almost certainly made elections history last month when they punched their last chads ever during September's one-item special election ballot.

The county commissioners voted Wednesday to accept a $540,000 bid from Sequoia Voting Systems for new optical scanning machines to tally voting results.

That means instead of reading ballot booklets and then poking out the right number on a separate punch card, voters from now on will make their choices right on their paper ballots, using a pen or pencil to fill in oval or rectangular shapes to indicate their choices of candidates and measures.

Elections manager Annette Newingham told the commissioners that the new system should be installed and tested by the next possible special election, most likely in February or March.

Marion and Yamhill counties in Oregon and Snohomish County in Washington already use the Sequoia system, "and they speak very highly of it - they say it's a real workhorse," Newingham said.

Among Oregon's 36 counties, only Lane, Washington and Clackamas still haven't made the conversion from punch cards to optical scanning systems. However, funding through the federal Help America Vote Act will pay most of the cost of the new system, $470,000 in Lane County's case.

The county will have to find the remaining $70,000 in its budget, as well as the cost of relocating the elections office to accommodate the much larger equipment and storage of the much bulkier ballots.

Although he voted for the new system, Commissioner Bill Dwyer said he had misgivings.

"I've always had confidence in the integrity of the system we have now, and if I were king, until we demonstrated that we had real problems with it, I wouldn't spend the money," Dwyer said. "We have lots of needs - the money could have been put to other good uses."

But board Chairman Peter Sorenson said the transition makes him breathe easier, especially with a presidential election coming up next year.

Florida had the most highly contested results in the nation in the 2000 election, "but Oregon was No. 2," Sorenson said. The punch-card system came in for a lot of well-founded criticism, and the new system will be more reliable in case of disputes.