Political activists continued to raise concerns Tuesday about the integrity of voting machines the county plans to purchase at a demonstration of the touch screen machines.
Others question whether the machines will do enough to help those with disabilities vote in secret, which is why the county might buy them.
Pima County is considering buying more than 400 AccuVote TS-X voting machines, manufactured by Diebold Elections Systems, at a cost of more than $2 million to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act.
The machines use a touch screen or a keypad to help people with disabilities and visual impairment vote without assistance. One would be placed in each polling place for the September primaries.
The use of electronic voting machines has attracted controversy around the country. New Mexico recently returned to the use of paper ballots. A group of activists plans to file suit today against the Arizona secretary of state over two companies' machines, including Diebold.
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The county postponed the purchase, which would have been reimbursed by the secretary of state, until May 16 after several people, most of them Pima County Democrats, raised concerns at a Board of Supervisors meeting last week.
Many of the more than two dozen people at the meeting Tuesday had concerns the machines could be used to tamper with the vote. A paper record of the vote is stored inside the machine.
Others were people with disabilities who wanted to try the machines for themselves.
Brian Duran, who uses a wheelchair and has limited use of his hands, said he might use the machine, but if the ballot was long, he still might ask for assistance in voting. He found it tiring to maneuver the keypad through several pages of selections.
Peri Jude Radecic, director of public advocacy for the Center for Disability Law, said those who had no use of their hands and those who are deaf and blind could not use the machines.
Radecic has seen a demonstration of the AutoMark machine produced by Diebold competitor Elections Systems and Software and thought it had some advantages, such as the ability to use a "sip and puff" system, in which people who cannot use their hands blow or suck into a straw to make selections.
Diebold has developed a sip-and-puff attachment, but it has not been certified yet. The county would need to purchase it later for more money after it was certified.
The AutoMark machine produces a paper ballot that could be fed through the Diebold optical scanners the county already uses. But the county may be precluded from mixing technology from two different systems because the two types of equipment are not certified to be used together.
Diebold will not submit its machines to be tested for use with a competitor's equipment, said Mark Radke, director of voting for Diebold. "We do not allow our machines to be mixed with other machines."
"I'm not sure what real alternatives there are," county Supervisor Ray Carroll said.
Brad Nelson, director of the Pima County Division of Elections, said he wasn't completely sold on the machines, but many of his concerns had been addressed.
"I'm optimistic," he said. "I'm not done being skeptical, but I'm becoming optimistic."
