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ORANGE COUNTY <br />BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS <br />ACTION AGENDA ITEM ABSTRACT <br />Meeting Date: January 24, 2006 <br />Action Agenda <br />Item No. q -G <br />SUBJECT: Acquisition of Voting Machines <br />DEPARTMENT: Manager/Elections PUBLIC HEARING: (Y/N) No <br />ATTACHMENT(S): <br />1/18/06 State Board of Elections <br />Executive Director Memo <br />INFORMATION CONTACT: <br />Rod Visser, 919-245-2308 <br />Carolyn Thomas or Pat Sanes, <br />919-245-2350 <br />PURPOSE: To approve the acquisition of new voting equipment necessary to ensure the <br />County's compliance with State and federal election law. <br />BACKGROUND: There has been considerable discussion during the past several months <br />about changes in State law that have led to the decertification as of January 1, 2006 of existing <br />voting equipment in most North Carolina counties, including Orange. The State Board of <br />Elections has been involved in developing a process under which voting machines certified to <br />be compliant with federal and state election laws can be acquired and installed in time for <br />scheduled May 2006 primary elections in North Carolina. At this writing, the State Board is <br />continuing to work with the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners (NCACC), the <br />one certified voting equipment vendor (ES&S), and the Attorney General's Office to hammer out <br />the process by which counties will acquire and implement the use of new voting equipment. <br />The accompanying January 18, 2006 memo from the Executive Director of the State Board of <br />Elections outlines intended procedures as they stand at this point in time. <br />Each county will receive federal grant money based on the number of voters they had during the <br />November 2004 general election and the number of One-Stop voting locations open for the <br />same election. Based on this formula, Orange County is scheduled to receive $626,025 in grant <br />money. In order for counties to receive their shares of grant funding, each county Board of <br />Elections was required to: <br />• have each Board of Elections member and Director observe 2 machine demonstrations <br />• conduct a public forum <br />• submit to their board of county commissioners their recommendation on the type of <br />equipment they would like to purchase, and <br />• submit their grant award request to the State Board of Elections. <br />Orange County's Board of Elections has met all these requirements. Following a public forum <br />on January 11, 2006, the Board of Elections voted on January 12 to purchase the Optical Scan <br />machine and the AutoMark, both provided by ES&S. The optical machine is basically the same <br />type of machine that Orange County has used for years. The difference in the new machine is <br />that it will notify the voter with a beeping sound if there is a race that was over-voted, a blank <br />ballot, or a ballot that was marked incorrectly. There is a notification scroll board on the <br />machine that will tell the voter what is wrong with the ballot and ask the voter if they wish for the