ELECTION UPDATE | Trumbull’s election devices going strong

ELECTION UPDATE | Trumbull’s election devices going strong

WARREN

This is the seventh general election in which the Trumbull County Board of Election has used its Diebold electronic, touch-screen voting machines, and one official says the machines appear to have many years left before they will need to be replaced.

“They told us [they would last] 20 years when we got them. At the rate they’re breaking down I’d say that’s true or longer,” said Allan Banner, head of the voting machine department at the Trumbull elections board.

Mahoning County’s elections board moved to a paper voting system this year, getting rid of the touch-screen system it bought in 2002 from the company Election Systems & Software.

Mahoning County elections officials said in September that 200 of its 1,100 electronic voting machines no longer work, and several others have problems.

The machines can’t “make it through a presidential election” in 2012, said Joyce Kale-Pesta, the board’s deputy director.