New ADA-compliant voting equipment will be coming to the Kenai Peninsula with the the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly approving $269,572 for the purchase of 26 vote tabulators and 20 ADA-compliant tablets to replace outdated, leased voting tabulators. The Borough currently owns 10 tablets which were purchased in 2021.
The new equipment brings the Borough into ADA-compliance in providing voting opportunities for voters with special needs.
Assembly Member Brent Hibbert explained the need for compliance and the cost.
“The Human Rights Commission said you (KPB) have to get in compliance. We have been in compliance; we are leasing voting machines-voting tabulators and we have been for a third year now. We’re looking to buy the new and improved models and the price on that is $269,572 for those voters and tabulators.”
Borough Assembly Member Tyson Cox further addressed concerns about ballot security.
“For one, I can tell you right now that the information for the Kenai Peninsula Borough would never go to Juneau. We are not connected to Juneau in any way. The way that the machines do work is you vote on that machine and you can do it in many ways, it depends on what the need is for that person. Once you are done, it’s printed out and it is a barcode. They use that barcode and that’s what gets put into the regular machines and it reads that so that no one is seeing what you voted. That does not go anywhere it just only stays at that location.”
The Kenai Borough former IT director, Ben Hanson described the process of transmitting voting information.
“Current system that’s in place uses regular telephone lines. 364 days out of the year those telephone lines are disconnected and they are plugged in at poll close and it’s a phone call from the polling location to the central office just through the regular phone lines. The current transition is really about upgrades that’s related to the current system going end of life; so, at some point there will be no support available for these machines. The things that we’re changing; it’s a revision of the platform as far as just maintaining currency, being able to maintain patches and all the security things that need to be in place. It does come with a transition from landline phones to cellular modems. That’s not a choice that we’re able to make we are buying a common off the shelf platform and it’s something that basically everything is moving in that direction.”
Hansen also addressed security and firewalls. Community members spoke of concerns with vote security.
“The current proposition is this to have two firewalls so there will be the general borough firewall and then there would be another dedicated firewall. There already is an existing firewall even though the machine is isolated. We have three servers isolated in a room 364 days a year they are not connected to anything and they are still sitting there with a firewall protecting them while they’re not connected. That first firewall would remain in place and then there would be a second firewall that would be added on top of that and that would be the connection that those cell connections would come back through. We still are proposing to keep that network connection to that room disconnected 364 days of the year.”
The Assembly, by vote of 7-1 passed Ordinance 2022-19-43 approving the expenditure for the purchase of the voting tabulators and tablets.
