Officials scramble to put in place contract on voting machine repairs

New Mexico may not have an preventative maintenance agreement for hundreds of voting tabulators bought to scan and read paper ballots. It does, however, have a contract in place to fix broken machines. But not for long. That contract is set to expire later this month and elections officials are scrambling to put in place an agreement for the general election two months from now.

"That is the most immediate concern," Bernalillo County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver said Thursday. Toulouse Oliver said deputy Secretary of State Don Francisco Trujillo told her recently that he would be "putting something together in the next week or so" to send to Nebraska-based ES&S, which sold the state the tabulators.

Making sure that help is on the way for machines that break leading up to Election Day is just one more loose end New Mexico needs to tie up as the Land of Enchantment strides toward the most important general election in decades.

Not only is the state considered a battleground in the presidential contest, but voters are selecting a U.S. Senator and all three of the state's congressmen.
But some elections officials worry the state isn't ready for Election Day. Chief among the concerns is that tabulators -- which scan and read paper ballots -- may malfunction on Election Day because preventative maintenance has not been performed on most of them in two years.

Compounding matters in some officials' minds is the performance of memory cards -- the brains of those machines. Prior to this year's June 3 primary, the cards had a higher failure rate than the machines, causing some officials to express concern and for many counties to stock up on extras.

And the Secretary of State's office still has no state elections director. The office's choice for the position -- James Noel -- withdrew his name from consideration on Monday after Republicans protested the decision. Noel is the son-in-law of U.S. Senate candidate and Democratic Congressman Tom Udall.

"It's very frightening to be two months away from the election," said Steven Robert Allen, executive director of Common Cause New Mexico, said in an interview with the Independent.

Allen said that he knew that elections officials are working hard, under very difficult circumstances, to make sure the general elections runs smoothly. But there are many obstacles.

Perhaps the biggest one is the lack of preventative maintenance and many blame Nebraska-based ES&S for that.

ES&S sold New Mexico $18 million worth of ballot tabulators in 2006 but has so far refused to provide preventative maintenance -- and training for local voting machine technicians. That's because many counties have refused to sign an agreement with the company that they say is way too expensive for what they get in return.

To add to the confusion it's unclear who owns the machines -- the state or the counties. The state says the counties do. Some counties say the state does.

Recently, ES&S said that it would provide New Mexico with a new option that might remedy the situation -- ES&S would train county employees to work on the machines for an undisclosed cost, ES&S spokesman Ken Fields said two weeks ago.

But the costs and where the training will occur still have not been shared with elections officials, Toulouse Oliver said. She sits on a committee that met with ES&S officials earlier this summer to discuss the issue. A spokesman for ES&S could not be immediately reached Thursday afternoon.

Toulouse Oliver said she didn't expect the training to happen in time for the general election.

"I don't personally anticipate that this will be in place for the general election," Toulouse Oliver said. "You never know. It may happen. But we're getting close to the election."

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