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Mahoning polling sites to feature new technology for voting
YOUNGSTOWN
Beginning with the May 5 primary election, voters in Mahoning County will have new technology at polling locations that election officials say will make it quicker and more efficient to cast ballots.
The board of elections agreed Tuesday to pay $289,000 to EA (Election Administrators) of St. Louis for 200 electronic poll books.
The tablet-sized computers “cuts registration time to 18 seconds for voters,” said Joyce Kale-Pesta, the board’s director.
When voters enter a polling location, they will go to one of the poll books, swipe their driver’s license — if they don’t have a license they can use another acceptable form of identification — and it will print out a slip of paper giving voters the authority to cast ballots, she said.
Voters will then go to their polling location, give the slip to poll workers and receive ballots, Kale-Pesta said.
This method also will tell voters their precinct, which should cut down on provisional ballots, Kale-Pesta said.
The current process has poll workers look up the names of voters in large paper binders of those registered in that particular precinct, then have them sign their name in another book before getting voting slips and finally, paper ballots.
Because the new method is easier and more efficient, Kale-Pesta said there won’t be lines of people waiting to vote.
The tablets should arrive shortly, and about 75 of them will be used during the May primary, which is light with races in only Youngstown and Struthers as well as tax levies in Craig Beach and the South Range school district.
Mahoning will be the ninth county in Ohio — which has 88 counties — with electronic poll books, Kale-Pesta said.
“This is something we’ve been considering for a few years,” said Mark Munroe, the election board’s chairman. “We went through two rounds of proposals over three years. We’ve seen a number of demonstrations. We’ve got a good system.”