Today’s “Daily Journal” guest columnist is Chad Adams, vice president for development of the John Locke Foundation and director of the Center for Local Innovation.
Last August, the General Assembly approved Senate Bill 223. In a classic example of the law of unintended consequences, North Carolina counties are now being forced to dump millions of dollars worth of relatively new voting machines and purchase machines through a new state-created monopoly with a company, Elections Systems & Software (ES&S). This is because ES&S is the only company that could or would comply with the new law which, among other things, requires an annual $7.5 million bond be posted with the state. And on January 26 the state Board of Elections finally allowed at least some sanity into this otherwise bizarre situation.
The details are rather complex, but the story unfolds in the following way. After the 2004 elections, Carteret County lost approximately 4,400 votes, which caused the state agriculture commissioner’s race to be undecided for months. The county knew which voters were affected and could have rectified the situation as Wake County had done before. But with knee-jerk speed, activists sprang into action to bring about a new law to make elections even better.
The idea’s actually a good one – they wanted to create a paper trail for all votes. This could easily have been accomplished working with existing vendors across the state over time, but the rush had the bill, called “Public Confidence in Elections,” before the legislature in no time. It sailed through the Senate and then the House with nary a whimper. After all, who could possibly vote against such a bill?
But the devil is in the details, and once enacted, vendors would be required to meet the stringent guidelines it laid out. First of all, potential vendors would have to provide the state with $7.5 million in bond money just to do business here. They would also have to let the state have access to all the software code (regardless of proprietary issues), and counties would have to be on a strict deadline to comply by the May 2006 primaries. In return counties would be given federal “Help Americans Vote Act” (HAVA) money (which is simply tax money) to cover the costs of replacing the equipment, even if their existing equipment was new. House Speaker Jim Black had an additional $20 million in the budget to cover costs that HAVA did not pick up. Again, some of this seemed reasonable, despite protestations from a handful of folks mindful of the ensuing chaos this would create.
As of December 2005, more than 90 counties had some form of non-compliance issue. More than 80 counties were going to have significant compliance issues that meant most, if not all, of their equipment would be junk. By the January 19, 2006, deadline, only one vendor was authorized by the state: ES&S. Counties were now under the gun to comply, have paper ballots in May, or run the risk of not having their primaries recognized by the state.
Mysteriously, Speaker Black removed the $20 million that would have assisted counties with this transition, and we also know that the HAVA money will fall short when one considers that counties will not only replace equipment but have to train staff as well. Buncombe County alone will be somewhere between $700k and $1 million short.
When the state board of elections met January 26, they did recognize that the money promised would fall short and agreed to add $3 million to help cover shortfalls that HAVA money would have left. They also agreed to centralize the testing of the new equipment to save counties another $2.4 million. We’re far short of perfection, but rational decisions were made.
So here we are in late January, dozens of counties still don’t know what they’re going to do. Many of them have good equipment that might only need minor modifications for compliance, but their vendor is no longer recognized. Ultimately, it’s going to cost millions in tax dollars to comply with a new, erroneous law. Yes, there were other minor problems statewide, but the irony is that many of the problems were with ES&S throughout the state, the ONLY vendor now legal. If you search around online, you’ll find rabid defenses of this bill with no real opportunity to debate.
Unintended consequences can be costly. Senate Bill 223 will go down in history as anecdotal evidence to that end. This is what happens when politicians don’t fully understand what they’re voting on and reactionary zealots are allowed to write policy. Where should we go from here?
North Carolina should allow vendors the opportunity to show they can comply with modifications to existing equipment. They should find a way to allow competition in voting equipment. The creation of a mandate on counties that costs millions of dollars, creates a state-sanctioned monopoly, and is so costly that only one company can comply is not what even the most ardent supporters could have envisioned. It’s time once again for some additional dialogue to take place. We’re really in need of some salient conversation about how to prevent turning millions of dollars in good voting equipment into very expensive paperweights. But then again, rabid conversations don’t often allow for such civil discourse.