Tina LaRoche, deputy director of the Union County Board of Elections, demonstrates one of the new ballot marking machines Union County has purchased. Local election officials are testing the equipment before putting it into use for the November election.
(Journal-Tribune photo by Mac Cordell)
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In November, Union County voters will notice a change.
Over the next few weeks, the Union County Board of Elections is receiving new voting equipment
In total, the new equipment cost $1.19 million, $667,000 of it paid by the state and the remainder by the county.
The purchase includes 258 ballot-marking machines, 30 of which are Americans With Disabilities Act compliant. It also includes 30 vote tabulators and 67 carts for the ballot marking machines.
“Everything is new,” said Tina LaRoche, deputy director of the Union County Board of Elections.
She said the county will continue to use a ratio of one machine for every 175 voters, the same ratio used in the past.
LaRoche said the county had the previous equipment system for 12 years. She said that when it was purchased, the county was told it would have about a 10-year life span. She said it was part of a statewide elections initiative.
“The state recognized that election equipment across the state was aging and that everyone needed to replace their equipment,” LaRoche said. “They were concerned that if equipment was going to fail, it was all going to fail at one time so there was a push to get the equipment replaced before the presidential election.”
She said it is important to test the system during a slower election.
“We would not implement anything new in a presidential election,” LaRoche said. “We want to make sure everything is running smoothly before we have a presidential election.”
LaRoche said there are less expensive systems.
“But it is really pay now or pay later,” she said.
The deputy director explained that when using paper ballots, the state requires the county create ballots for 110 percent of the potential voters. In the primary elections, it means two potential ballots for 110 percent of all registered voters.
“We did a cost analysis, the number of ballots we were required to print by the Secretary of State’s office is cost prohibitive,” LaRoche said. “At the end of the day, a lot of that would just get thrown away.”
Under the old system, electronic ballots were loaded into the machines based on precinct locations. Voters cast their ballots on the machine. The machines created a paper receipt and tabulated the results.
With the new system, when a voter signs in at the polling location, they are given a code. The voter scans the code at the ballot-marking device, which reads the code and identifies the correct ballot.
“That ensures they get the eight ballot,” said LaRoche. “This way the poll worker doesn’t need to look them up. It will automatically come from the voter registration system.”
Once the voter is identified, the screen reveals the ballot. The screens are touch sensitive, like a tablet, meaning the voters simply touch the candidate they choose and swipe right to the next position or question.
“This holds no votes,” LaRoche said. “All this does is marks the ballot.”
At the end of the ballot, voters have the chance to review their ballot before printing a ballot. The ballot is then inserted into a central tabulator.
“The vote is not actually cast until we take it over and put it in the tabulator,” LaRoche said. “That is going to be a big thing to know, that your ballot is not cast until it goes into the tabulator.”
She said that in addition to cost, the system has advantages. She said voter review their ballot and must verify under votes. She said it will eventually allow the board to consolidate polling locations and have poll workers do their job more efficiently. She said the results will come back much quicker as well.
But the most important advantage is an accurate election.
“You remove some opportunity for human error,” LaRoche said. “Poll workers will not need to determine which ballot they get. The system will do that.”
She added, “I think the margin for error is less with a ballot marking device is less than with a paper ballot. With a ballot marking device, there is less room for interpreting intent.”