By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
Wood County citizens will be casting their votes this November on new touchscreen voting machines.
On Monday, the new $2.4 million voting system was delivered to the Wood County Board of Elections.
The new voting units will be replacing the county’s 12-year-old touchscreen system. The learning curve should be easy for voters to navigate – especially when compared to 12 years ago when county voters had to transition from the old punch card system that had been used in Wood County for nearly 40 years.
“These function almost identically,” to the current system, said Terry Burton, director at the Wood County Board of Elections.
So now, with the 525 voting units being unpacked, the testing begins.
The new system features bigger and brighter screens, better color, and printers that light up when voters ask to view their ballots. The printers are more efficient and use less paper than the previous units, Burton said.
The voters can choose the text size, ask for higher contrast, and use headphones to have the ballot read aloud to them.
Senate Bill 135 set aside $114.5 million for new voting machines in Ohio. Based on the number of registered voters and size of the county, Wood County’s share is $1.3 million. The funding is intended to replace all the voting machines in the state – as long as county boards of election are satisfied with the “Chevrolets” and not the “Cadillacs” of voting machines.
Wood County Board of Elections doesn’t want the “Cadillac” of voting systems, but it doesn’t want the “Chevrolet” either, Burton said earlier this year.
“We’re looking for the SUV,” he said. “We’re looking for a system that’s hardy.”
Burton expects voters to have no problem adapting to the new system.
“Our voters have had good acceptance,” of the touchscreen systems, he said. They adapted quickly from the punch card to the first touchscreen units. “And that was a pretty big technology jump.”
Voting systems are being updated across Ohio – with all counties getting some financial help from the state for the new units.
Wood County election officials have stressed that they want to have the systems tried out before the 2020 presidential election.
“That’s our intention,” Burton said of the goal to have the new units available to voters this November.
Prior to November, the board of elections will have the voting machines available for voters to try out.
The new voting machines will be equipped with multiple backups. In addition to the electronic version of the ballots, there will also be a digital image created of the ballots, plus a paper copy.
The new systems also won’t need frequent fixes for calibration, Burton said. The existing units had problems with the screens shifting.
“These are like your Android phone, you don’t have to recalibrate the screens,” he said. “That’s something that’s not going to be an issue.”
Wood County Board of Elections has 675 of the current voting units – many which were used as spare units.
The county is in the process of reducing the number of voting machines being placed at precincts on election days, with 475 being deployed last year. But the county ordered 525 of the new units in the case of “hot races” with higher voter turnout, to handle more voters if the county’s population grows, and to have replacement units, Burton said
“It’s best to have them in-house now,” than have to order more later, he said.
While the new systems cost $2.4 million, the state kicked in $1.3 million, and the county received $584,364 in trade-in credit. Though the county is being paid for the old systems, it will have to dispose of the old units after making them inoperable, Burton said.
So when it was all done, the Wood County Commissioners will have to pay $536,814.
The commissioners had agreed to a total of $900,000 to go toward the new voting system. So some of that funding will go toward electronic pollbooks for pollworkers ($135,925), equipping the new voting machines with legs ($176,500), and storage needs for the new system ($50,760).
Next month, the board of elections will be announcing its efforts to combine voting precincts into “voting centers.” In Bowling Green, for example, several precincts share voting locations at the Wood County District Public Library and St. Mark’s Lutheran Church.
Last November, the county had 52 voting locations. The board of elections is looking at decreasing that in the future. That would not only require fewer voting machines, but also fewer poll workers.
“We struggle every election to find 400 people countywide” to staff the polls, Burton said.
There are also some current voting locations in the more rural areas of southeastern Wood County where the buildings don’t meet ADA accessibility requirements.
