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Mahoning County officials debate buying or leasing machines
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The Mahoning County Board of Elections recently moved to its new location at Oakhill Renaissance Place in Youngstown. A ribbon-cutting was Monday. Participating in the ceremony were, from left, election board members Michael Morley, Mark Munroe, and Clarence Smith; Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, county Commissioner Anthony Traficanti, elections board Director Thomas McCabe, and county Commissioner Carol Rimedio-Righetti.
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Raymond Butler, a Mahoning County Board of Elections employee, shows off the new paper-ballot voting system the county will use in the November general election.
YOUNGSTOWN
Mahoning County commissioners agree with board of elections officials that a new voting system is needed for the November general election and are looking for ways to pay for it.
The proposed paper-ballot system, which would replace electronic touch-screen-voting machines used for the past nine years, would cost $684,000 to buy new from Election Systems & Software.
An option to lease the equipment for less than $100,000 a year also is a possibility.
Commissioner Anthony Traficanti favors buying the machines.
He wants to pay for them by either borrowing the money, restructuring county debt or seeing if the money can somehow come from the county’s general fund.
ES&S wouldn’t have to be paid until January 2012, said Joyce Kale-Pesta, the board’s deputy director.
“The funds haven’t been identified, but we have to make a decision relatively soon,” Traficanti said. “We’re probably better off buying.”
Of the 1,100 electronic voting machines the board has, about 200 no longer work, and several others have problems, Kale-Pesta said.
The machines can’t “make it through a presidential election” in 2012, she said.
The plan is to use the new paper-ballot machines beginning with the Nov. 8 general election, Kale-Pesta said.
Commissioner Carol Rimedio-Righetti, a retired board of elections employee, said new machines are a necessity.
Unlike Traficanti, Rimedio- Righetti said leasing the machines for a year or two is a viable option.
“No one has any money,” she said. “I’m not sure what would be more cost-efficient.”
Commissioner John McNally IV says the new machines are needed. The commissioners will meet Thursday with the county’s bond counsel to help determine whether to buy, lease or lease-to-buy option is best, he said.
The board of elections recently moved from the South Side Annex on Market Street to Oakhill Renaissance Place on Oak Hill Avenue.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony was Monday.
Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, who attended the event, said there aren’t state or federal funds available to help pay the cost of the county’s new voting machines.
The county paid $2.95 million to ES&S in 2002 for most of the electronic touch-screen voting machines.
In compliance with state law, the county spent $864,063 to add a paper trail to all its machines, and purchase 142 others.
The state gave $2.1 million in federal funds to the county to pay a portion of the voting-machines’ cost.
The machines were supposed to last 10 to 12 years, but their life expectancy was reduced because they weren’t designed to include a paper trail, Kale-Pesta said.
The county used paper ballots for about 17 years before changing to electronic machines in 2002.
The new paper system is more sophisticated than the previous paper ballots, Kale-Pesta said. Voters will complete a paper ballot and feed it into an optical- scanner machine.