New voting machines arrive in Pulaski

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Pulaski County Clerk Ralph Troxtell demonstrates one of 62 new voting machines that recently arrived and are stored at the Hal Rogers Fire Training Center. Bill Mardis Photo

February 13, 2009

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By BILL MARDIS, Editor Emeritus The Commonwealth Journal Fri Feb 13, 2009, 08:35 AM EST

Pulaski County’s new voting machines with optical scanners to read paper ballots have arrived and are stored at the Hal Rogers Fire Training Center awaiting the next election.

County Clerk Ralph Troxtell pointed out that 2009 is an election-free year in Kentucky “but the new machines are ready in case of a special election.” The next scheduled elections are in 2010 when courthouse and city hall officials are up for election or re-election.

Use of paper ballots is not a backslide into the 1960s when hand-counted ballots were the mode of all elections. Paper ballots, electronically counted with optical scanners, are a trend in Kentucky and nationally to create a paper trail to establish more integrity in the voting process.

Officially, the new voting machines are called Harp Intercivic eScan. Harp Enterprises Inc., Lexington, submitted the lone bid of $279,000 to supply 62 voting machines. Some $261,000 of the cost for 57 machines, one for each precinct, was paid by the federal Help America Vote Act and the Pulaski Fiscal Court agreed to pay about $20,000 for five additional machines, Troxtell said. With two scanners the county already had for counting walk-in and mail-in absentee ballots the total number of available machines is 64.

The paper ballot process is simple. The voter is handed a paper ballot on which are names of the candidates. He or she marks choices with a regular pen or pencil, just like paper ballots of old. Then, when the ballot is marked, the voter slips it into the eScan and the ballot is read electronically.

The paper ballot automatically drops into a sealed container in the eScan. By law, it can’t be opened, except by court order, for 30 days after the election.

Troxtell said the new voting machines are apparently foolproof.

“I spent a half day at Harp headquarters (in Lexington) trying to make a machine mess up and I couldn’t,” Troxtell said. A message on a video screen tells the voter if the vote is accepted or how to correct an error.

Each machine is bar-coded for the precinct at which it will be used. He said the paper ballots, to be printed by Harp, also will be bar-coded for each specific machine “ ... and you can’t take a ballot from one precinct and vote it at another,” Troxtell said.

Because of more rapid voting with paper ballots and optical scanners, the state mandate to split or place additional voting machines at precincts with more than 700 registered voters is lifted, Troxtell noted. Pulaski County has a couple of precincts with more than 1,800 registered and about 20 more with over 700 voters.

Troxtell is convinced that using paper ballots will reduced the time voters spend behind the curtain. He also believes that voters staying away from the polls because of being intimidated by computers will welcome the opportunity to vote on paper as they formerly did.

The eSlate voting machine for the physically challenged is required by federal law to remain at each precinct, meaning there will still be two voting machines –– eSlate and optical scanner –– at each voting place. However, the eSlate and eScan machines are now on the same program and no longer will it be necessary to merge totals from two machines, a process that has delayed the tabulation process with the eSlate and 1242 machines.

“We’ll be able to have unofficial totals within minutes after the last precinct is brought to the courthouse,” said Troxtell. After the polls close, precinct officers remove a small memory card from the scanner at each precinct and transport it to the master computer at the clerk’s office.

“That’s all there is to it,” said Troxtell.

The 1242 machines, no longer in use, remain in storage at the fire training center.

“They’ll (1242s) will stay here until we decide what to do with them,” said Troxtell.

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