11/9/2009 4:26:00 PM Going digital on election day
Secretary of State Mark Ritchie gets a lesson on electronic voter registration from election judge Donna Kamm at Cross of Glory Baptist Church in Minnetonka on Nov. 3. PHOTO: Mark Trockman
Two polling places in Minnetonka were the first in the state to try out electronic poll books on an election day.
The poll books were used for voter check-in and voter registration, functions that are typically accomplished using paper records.
Secretary of State Mark Ritchie visited the Minnetonka polling places to observe the electronic poll books in action.
He later said the systems looked faster than using the paper printouts and have the potential to save money.
Paper voter registration forms demand time consuming data entry.
"I believe this was the first actual use in a live election" in Minnesota, Ritchie said. "And it's interesting because Minnetonka was also the first place to use the optical scan ballot system."
That system, which scans the finished ballots, was first used in 1985 in Minnetonka.
Much of the reason Minnetonka was first to try out the electronic poll books was due to the work of Minnetonka City Clerk David Maeda, who five years ago worked as an elections supervisor for Hennepin County.
Back then he saw a need to go electronic to save money, time and improve accuracy, he said.
He spoke with Minnetonka-based Datacard Group about it, and the company went on to develop one of the systems used Nov. 3 in Minnetonka.
"It was because I wanted to do it," Maeda said, explaining why Minnetonka was chosen for the pilot project. "I've been interested in this technology. In fact I gave Datacard the idea to do this five years ago."
The other version of the electronic poll book was made by Election Systems & Software.
Down the line, the systems have the potential to eliminate the need for Hennepin County to hire about two dozen employees for data entry after elections, which Ritchie said could save money and be more accurate.
"You don't have the person to say 'Oh, is that an 'e' or 'c' in that name,'" Ritchie said.
The equipment is basically a laptop with what looks like a retail scanner and printer attached.
Maeda said they cost about $800-$1,000 each and are not hooked up to the Internet. Those registering to vote can simply have an ID scanned and then a printout is made to be signed.
"It went very well," Maeda said. "Going in, one of my concerns was how the election judges would react to this new technology. And every single one of them I talked to, they wanted me to buy them."
Ritchie said it's a local decision to use the technology.
Maeda said he's not rushing out to buy any because more study is needed, and finding funding to buy them could be an obstacle. But he also said they could save money overall.
"I really think that these things would pay for themselves in a very short time, especially from the county perspective, because if you don't have to hire all that staff for each election it would save a lot of money."
Ritchie said that as many as 600,000 people register to vote on election day, and all that information gets packed off to county offices.
He warmed to the idea of electronic poll books while hearing about them on a state tour he took to meet with election officials after the 2008 election recount. In Clay County, a number of election officials had seen how the poll books worked in North Dakota.
"They loved the process, so that gave me a lot of positive information, that made me more curious," Ritchie said.
He also said the new system could have advantages for privacy, because there's less opportunity for people in line to read the addresses upside-down off paper lists.
The bottom line, he said, was whether using the electronic poll books was a good experience for election administrators and voters.
This was an opportune time to test them because it wasn't a busy election.
"Minnetonka broke some new ground and made some history today," Ritchie said on Nov. 3.
