Tuesday, November 1,1988 The Battalion Page 7 e 3.00 Expires 12/13® im Brooks County will tally votes on optical scanner % IPS now d! 00 $200 $200 $200 $200 $200 $200 $200 $200 00 $200 , or rm I to )se DO $100 lY $100 $100 ed $100 j v $100 y ‘ $100 $100 )0 $100 540 $40 $40 $40 $40 $40 lan- $40 .40 $40 40 $40 $40 $40 hi* $4 ° ble 540 to $40 $40 40 $40 100 $400 $400 $400 in $400 to $ 400 ° $400 $400 [00 $400 FALFURRIAS (AP) — Texas’ small est county is following the trend of other small counties nationwide with the intro duction of an electronic voting system. For the first time ever, Brooks County will tally votes from the Nov. 8 general election with an optical scanning system, one of the latest electronic tabulation systems available. Demelza Rodriguez, a vote counter from Falfurrias, the county seat, said, "It’s about time. It was the stone age down here.” Brooks County is an impoverished South Texas farm county with 6,000 reg istered voters. As recently as the Super Tuesday primaries in March, voters had to wait until Friday to see which candi dates they supported. The county used precinct “callers,” who unfold paper ballots one by one and call out names to be recorded in ledgers by “talliers.” Instead, there will be a central count ing station at the courthouse. Four assistant tabulators will feed pa per ballots into the tabulating machines and push a button to get a printout of the tallies. It will all cost a little more than $4,000 to lease the four digital vote tabulators from Dallas-based Business Records Corp. County officials say they may try to raise funds to buy the machines — for slightly more than $21,000 — after the election, if the system proves faster. Business Records Corp., the largest national distributor of electronic voting equipment, has recorded increases of 10 percent to 15 percent annually in its cus tomer base for the past decade. Penelope Bonsall, director of the Na tional Clearinghouse on Election Admin istration, which is part of the Federal Election Commission, said “There’s been a fairly r^pid conversion of small Legislator calls for resignation DALLAS (AP) — A state legislator has called for the resignation of Insur ance Commissioner Doyce Lee in the wake of a report that National County Mutual Fire Insurance Co. was sinking for years but was placed under supervi sion only two weeks ago. State Rep. Eddie Cavazos, D-Corpus Christi, who heads the budget and over sight panel of the Flouse Committee on Insurance, said, “The insurance com missioner is hurting not only the con sumer but the industry by letting all these things happen.” National County Mutual collapsed un der a deficit of more than $50 million and on Oct. 24 was declared insolvent, making it one of the biggest insurance failures in Texas history. National County Mutual has 125,000 policyhold ers, and the cost of their claims is likely to be passed on to taxpayers and other in surance companies in Texas. Memorandums written by senior staff ers at the State Board of Insurance and obtained by the Dallas Morning News in dicate the company had been flounder ing, the newspaper reported in its Mon day editions. Some of the memos urged top officials of the insurance department to take control of the company. Cavazos said the problems within the agency are so severe that it could be dan gerous if it is not addressed immediately, He added that he intends to hold a hear ing on National County Mutual’s de mise. "We’re going to find out what the hell happened,” Cavazos said. Lee has defended the insurance de partment’s action’s regarding National County Mutual. He has said that the de partment tried but failed to find another company to pump cash into the firm. One memo, written last month by Deputy Commissioner Lee Powell and addressed to his superiors, stated that National County Mutual’s “financial and operational deficiencies have been documented for several years.” Powell declined to comment, saying such memos are private by law. Dire warnings on National County Mutual’s condition were outlined in a confidential report prepared in Septem ber 1987 by senior attorneys within the department’s legal services. The report said “there is sufficient reason to believe that the company is threatened with insolvency” and that an appropriate remedy would be to place the company under supervision. Other concerns were mentioned in the report: • National County Mutual had en gaged in “fraudulent business prac tices,” had unfairly handled policyhold ers’ claims and was “a threat to the public interest,” the report said. Among the offenses alleged in the report was the company failed to issue refunds to cus tomers who canceled their policies. • The company had removed from the state “books, papers, accounts or re cords necessary” for a financial exami nation. The report was requested by Bogdan Rentea, who was director of the depart ment’s legal services division. Rentea, now a lawyer in private prac tice, said that he became particularly concerned about National County Mu tual in late 1986 and early 1987. He said he held a meeting during that period with other senior managers in the insurance department, and “Everybody was in agreement that this company was out of control and something had to be done.” Rentea said he could not confirm whether he had ever formally recom mended action against National County Mutual because it is privileged informa tion. Frustration within the insurance com pany continued to grow this year while top officials delayed taking control of the company, according to memos. “I continue to be gravely concerned about the bad precedent we are setting by taking ‘no action’ regarding the financial condition of National County,” began a memo written in July by Ron Sheaffer, the department’s supervising fire and casualty analyst. Sheaffer’s memo rec ommended that the company be placed in receivership. Sheaffer said he could not comment on the memo. A three-member board of gubernato rial appointees oversees the insurance department. Edwin J. Smith, the chair man of the board, said Sunday that the board “wants to know, more than any one, what happened in the case of Na tional County Mutual and the manner in which it was handled. ” Experts try pitting bug against bug to end pests SOUTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. (AP) — A Mexican mite is being tested against the Colorado potato beetle that also dev astates tomatoes and eggplants. A Chinese wasp may stop a butterfly that eats broccoli, cabbage and Brussels sprouts. Humans increasingly have allies in the enemy camp in the war on insects. Biological controls like these and oth ers using insects against problem plants have been used commercially for more than 100 years, racking up hundreds of successes. In the last 10 years, though, interest has grown. Last year, for example, the federal government spent more than $85 million on nearly 800 biological control projects, four times the number in existence a de cade ago, said Jim Cate of the U.S. Agri culture Department. “We are now just getting back into an era where entomologists are realizing you can’t solve the problem with pesti cides alone,” said Robert Metcalf, who has worked more than 50 years on pest controls. “For a long time there were ad vocates of the sole use of each one. Now I think you’ll find almost everybody agrees you need a little of each.” “There are many different crop pests that have been serious and are not serious because they have been able to find bi ological controls,” said Patrick Logan, a University of Rhode Island entomologist working on potato beetles. The mites live on adult beetles and suck fluid from them. Up to 2,000 can infest each beetle. They can shorten the beetles’ lifespans up to 50 percent, re ducing the number of eggs laid, and they hinder the beetles’ flying ability, reduc ing migration, Logan said. University of Massachusetts research ers are studying a wasp from northwest China, Apanteles rubecula, which inserts its tiny needle into a cabbage butterfly larva and lays eggs. The wasp larvae eat the pest. Most insects became pests after their natural environments were upset, letting them run rampant. Others were acciden tally imported on vegetables and plants to areas where they had no natural preda-. tors. Biological controls seek to restore na-~ ture’s balance. “It’s a totally natural way to regulate (pest) populations,” said Metcalf, 72, a professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana and a member of the National Academy of Science. “It doesn’t pol lute, it doesn’t cost anything if it works, it’s self-regulating and self-correcting.” Still, biological controls aren’t always successful, and can be virtually ineffec tive, as with the gypsy moth, which es caped in 1882. From 1905 to 1911, re searchers brought 2 million species of its natural enemies from Europe. But the ef fort failed because in Europe there are a large number of natural enemies, each of which controls a small number of the moths, Logan said. counties to optical scan in the last three or four years.” During that time, it merged with seve ral other companies, said Tom Esch- berger, a regional vice president. This year, revenues of $45 million are expected. Generally, experts say, the moderate price of many optical scan systems has made them attractive to smaller voting jurisdictions. Besides the optical scan, other electro nic tallying methods include punchcard and direct recording electronic, in which votes are recorded directly into a com puter. In Texas, approximately 80 of the state’s 254 counties now use electronic voting systems, according to Sharon Hanko of the secretary of state’s office. In Brooks County, no one is sure how long the counting will take this time since write-ins and incorrectly marked ballots will have to be hand-counted. Evelyn Solomon, who said she has been a precinct judge for at least 10 years, worried that the new ballots would be difficult for voters to use. “This ballot’s going to confuse every one,” she said. “At first my husband just said, ‘I’m not going to vote,’ when he saw it.” Sears sells tallest facility to up earnings CHICAGO (AP) — Sears, Roebuck and Co. said Monday it is selling the world’s tallest building and revamping its merchandising approach in a sweep ing bid to strengthen the lackluster earn ings record of the nation’s largest re tailer. Sears also said it would buy back up to 10 percent of its stock, divest its Cold- well Banker commercial real estate sub sidiary and take $425 million in after-tax fourth-quarter charges. Edward Brennan, chairman and chief executive officer of the 102-year-old Chicago-based company, stressed the re structuring plan is designed to enhance Sears’ value to shareholders immediately and at the same time concentrate its re sources over the longer term on con sumer-oriented businesses — retailing, insurance, real estate and financial serv ices. He conceded, however, that the tim ing of the announcement may have been affected by the recent wave of takeover activity, Brennan declined to say how much Sears hoped to get for its landmark Sears Tower, which rises 110 stories — 1,450 feet — in the downtown Loop business district. It was built in 1974 and has been valued at $1.8 billion. Sears’ share of the retail market has eroded steadily despite attempts to up date the company’s image. The company has test-marketed stores devoted to a single product area, such as apparel or appliances, and offering a wide range of national brands. It also is scrapping frequent sales in favor of “ev eryday low pricing. ’ ’ Sears had been expected to take some action to improve the value of its stock after announcing last week that third- quarter profits fell 16 percent — the third consecutive period Sears’ income has de clined. HOW DOES THE . WORLD PERCEIVE THE STATES? ^Oyy TUESDAY NOVEMBER 1 FEATURING RICHARD CARLSON THE DIRECTOR OF VOICE OF fiMERICA 7:30 p.m. MSC RM 224 of MSC Political Forum Election '88 Series: presents ELECTION AWARENESS DAY 19»« Come get information about the candidates and vote in our mock election. Wednesday, November 2 10-4 p.m. MSC Hallway This program is presented for educational purposes, and does not constitute an endorsement for any candidate. 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