Next test of counties' voting systems: primaries

Area counties have all held at least one election on new equipment put into service last year. Lower turnout for off-year elections, however, suggests tens of thousands of registered voters have yet to cast a ballot on the latest generation of voting machines.

Next month’s primary will be another test to see whether the equipment is ready for a contentiously large presiden- tial election in November.

“We are really excited we were able to get it in before the presidential year of course. We don’t want to change a system that sensitive in what we expect to be such a high turnout year,” said Eric Corbin, deputy director of the Butler County Board of Elections.

A $114.5 million infusion of state funding approved in 2018 helped counties replace aging machines.

For many in the Miami Valley, the voting experience with the new equip- ment remains very similar to what each county’s voters experienced in the past, whether marking their bal- lots directly on paper or using touchscreen devices, said county elections directors.

“We are still a paper ballot county. The voters aren’t going to see a big change on their end,” said Brian Sleeth, Warren County’s elections director. “It’s really the backend stuff that they don’t see that has some really nice features.”

Warren County, like in most Ohio counties, have new scan- ners at polling locations that allow more voters to pass through polling locations faster with fewer machines, Sleeth said.

“It speeds the voting at the polls. It helps with the lines at voting machines,” he said.

Voters in Montgomery County can choose to mark a paper ballot directly, but most opt to use the new touchscreen marking devices, outwardly similar to the direct record electronic (DRE) machines used before. The new machines place the votes in the right spot on a paper ballot, which is then fed into new scanners for tabulation.

The new system reduces from 1,500 to 400 the number of memory sticks required to be transported from precincts and downloaded at the Board of Elections on election night, said Jan Kelly, Montgomery County Board of Elections director.

“So our election results are getting reported much quicker and earlier in the night, and we hope to continue to do that barring any unforeseen circumstances,” Kelly said.

Corbin said some Butler County voters experienced “growing pains,” though the county’s new system, first used last November, is very similar to the older DRE machines the county retired.

“Some voters went up and knew just what to do. Other voters weren’t just quite sure where to put the access card into the machine,” he said. “We are going to have better instructions for voters this time, too, to try to alleviate the skills gap.”

As the March election will be the first primary in Montgomery County using its new electronic poll books, voters will no longer have to verbalize their ballot preference, which is a big change, Kelly said.

An elections official will now rotate a screen toward the voter who will tap on the pad to select which ballot they want to receive. Neither the poll workers, nor those within earshot, will know which primary ballot a voter selected.

“They might not want them to know what party they are voting, maybe they are switching parties, maybe they just don’t want anybody to know their business, which is great,” Kelly said.

In previous instances, hush-toned requests between voters and poll workers led to voters receiving the wrong ballot, Kelly said.

“There was often confusion on which party had been selected either by the voter or the elections official, she said. “That will hopefully eliminate a lot of ballots that have to be soiled, defaced and reissued.”