Heller: Election machines part of fed budget

Secretary of State Dean Heller's office says a review of federal budgets shows Nevada will get enough money - $19.7 million - to meet requirements of the Help America Vote Act, including buying and setting up new electronic voting machines statewide.

However, Chief of Staff Renee Parker said, deep cuts in the budget proposed by President Bush for 2005 would seriously undermine the state's ability to maintain the new election system and make upgrades to it.

Initial reports indicated the money Nevada expects this year would be sharply cut back, But Parker said Congress increased the amount Bush put in this year's budget to the full $1.5 billion required for states to implement the act.

That will mean about $9 million to Nevada in April. With the $5 million the state has already received and the $5.7 million in the pipeline to Nevada, she said that's enough to fully implement the election reforms mandated by the federal government.

The biggest piece is $9.3 million to purchase several thousand electronic voting machines from Sequoia Pacific Voting Systems, which beat out Diebold Inc. to win the contract for voting machines in Nevada. The new touch-screen units operate much like an ATM machine.

Parker said another $4 million will pay for a statewide voter registration system. More money will install a provisional voting tabulation system, upgrade warehousing facilities needed to store the new machines, and add "voter verifiable receipts" - basically ballot printers - to all the voting machines so voters can see on paper who they voted for in each race.

Altogether, she said the system will come to nearly $20 million - or about what the federal government has allotted to Nevada.

But she said if Congress adopts Bush's $40 million budget instead of the $600 million originally allotted for 2005, Nevada and other states won't have the money needed to maintain the new system, educate voters, or pay for needed upgrades and programming changes, following what is learned during this year's elections.

Heller said Monday he plans to talk with other secretaries of state and Nevada's congressional delegation to make sure they understand the importance of restoring as much of that money as possible.

Contact Geoff Dornan at nevadaappeal@sbcglobal.net or 687-8750.