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F I S C A L I M P A C T R E P O R T

SPONSOR HAFC

ORIGINAL DATE

LAST UPDATED

2/14/06

HB 430/HAFCS

SHORT TITLE Require Paper Ballots for all Voting Systems

SB

ANALYST Medina

APPROPRIATION (dollars in thousands)

Appropriation

Recurring

or Non-Rec

Fund

Affected

FY06

FY07

(See Fiscal Implications)

(Parenthesis ( ) Indicate Expenditure Decreases)

Relates to House Bill 530, which contains a $4,000.0 appropriation.

SOURCES OF INFORMATION

LFC Files

SUMMARY

Synopsis of Bill

House Appropriations and Finance Committee Substitute for House Bill 430 amends the Election

Code to require the use of paper ballot voting systems. The bill requires all voting systems used

in elections covered by the Election Code use a paper ballot on which the voter physically or

electronically marks the voter’s choices on the ballot itself, provided that voting systems owned

or used by a county on March 1, 2006 that do not use a paper ballot may be used until either De-

cember 31, 2007 or until an adequate supply of voting systems is available and sufficient federal,

state or local funds are available to address the mandate. Funds would need to be available to re-

place the voting systems, acquire the necessary software, pay the existing debt on the voting sys-

tems to be replaced, and for the Secretary of State to purchase the paper ballots for all counties to

use on the new voting systems for primary and general elections. This bill requires that at least

one additional voting system be provided per precinct, and if the voting system used in the pre-

cinct is a paper ballot system, the county clerk is to ensure that an adequate number of voting

booths are provided in lieu of providing more electronic vote tabulators.

This bill also prohibits voting systems from being used if it has not been certified by the Secre-

tary of State and if a competitive bid process has not been conducted by the Secretary of State

pursuant to Chapter 13, Article 1, NMSA 1978. Furthermore, this bill requires the paper ballot to

be used by the state or its contractor to check either the veracity of a machine count or the count

House Bill 430/HAFCS – Page

2

itself and, just as absentee ballots in a recount proceeding. In the case of a discrepancy, the paper

ballot is to be considered the true and correct record of the voter’s choice.

FISCAL IMPLICATIONS

This committee substitute bill is a companion to House Bill 530, which carries an appropriation

of $4,000.0 from the general fund to the Secretary of State for the purpose of purchasing voting

machines from counties that purchased voting machines to meet new voting system standards.

The appropriation would be made if legislation, such as House Appropriations and Finance

Committee Substitute for House Bill 430, is enacted requiring the replacement of those voting

machines.

There is no clear indication from the Secretary of State as to how many voting machines would

need to be purchased from the counties. According to LFC and DFA analysis, there are approxi-

mately 1,400 precincts throughout the state and federal HAVA mandates require that at least one

HAVA-compliant voting machine be made available at a single polling place. Precincts are often

consolidated into groups to form a polling place for HAVA purposes. Nevertheless, it remains

unclear how many voting machines would need to be purchased or what the fair market price

would be for these machines. Just as unclear as to whom the machines would then be sold by the

Secretary of State is where the machines would be stored for the period between the purchase

from the counties and the sale to prospective buyers.

DXM/yr