MAHONING COUNTY Board OKs contract for absentee ballots

The elections board will use absentee ballots printed from the new voting machines beginning in May.
By DAVID SKOLNICK
VINDICATOR POLITICS WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Mahoning County Board of Elections approved a contract today with a vendor to print absentee ballots for the Nov. 5 general election -- and for the last time.
With the November election, Mahoning County voters will cast ballots using a new $2.9 million electronic touch-screen voting system. It replaces paper ballots that were used for the past 17 years.
The electronic voting system can print absentee ballots. But Michael V. Sciortino, elections board director, said employees are still learning the new system and to add the responsibility of printing the ballots is too much of a challenge at this point.
"We've got training and answering phones to take care of so we thought it was best to wait until May to start printing our own ballots," he said.
People who come to the board of election's office on Market Street have the option of using a paper ballot or voting on the new machines, Sciortino said.
The elections board awarded today an $18,637 contract to Youngstown Lithographing to print absentee ballots.
More than enough
The Youngstown company will print about 30,000 absentee ballots, Sciortino said. The elections board typically uses less than one-third of that amount, but prints more to be sure that it does not run out of ballots, he said.
"Every year we throw out tens of thousands of paper votes," Sciortino said. "But we don't know from what precincts people will ask for absentee ballots so we have to print more than we will ever use."
Beginning in May, those requesting absentee ballots will have them mailed to them from an electronic voting machine printout, he said.
Also today, the board approved a $6,053 contract with Barrett Brothers, a Springfield, Ohio company, to provide precinct supply kits.
The kits, used at the county's 312 precincts, include books for voters to sign when they cast ballots as well as instruction manuals, posters warning people about election fraud and other supplies. The board has no plans to eliminate the kits in the future.
skolnick@vindy.com