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County mulls purchase of new voting machines
By Justin Wier
YOUNGSTOWN
The Mahoning County Board of Elections looks poised to purchase new voting machines in time for May’s primary election.
Joyce Kale-Pesta, director of the county’s board of elections, said the state plans to cover 80 percent of the purchase price for counties that invest in new voting machines next year.
“This is the only opportunity I think we have to move into the future,” she said.
The topic came up at Thursday’s budget hearing with county commissioners, and Kale-Pesta said new machines could save money because the ballots cost less and print on demand.
One potential machine would have ballots that cost 9 cents each. The ballots used in this month’s election cost about 60 cents each.
With 54,805 ballots cast in this month’s election, the move would have reduced costs from about $33,000 to $5,000.
This doesn’t take excess ballots into account. The state requires the board to have ballots for 100 percent of its registered voters plus an additional 1 percent.
The state’s commitment should be clear by the end of the year, Kale-Pesta said.
Tom McCabe, the board of elections’ deputy director, said many voting systems across the state are 12 to 15 years old.
Kale-Pesta said she would like to purchase the machines in January for use in May’s primary election.
She and other board of elections officials will travel to Cleveland in December to hear presentations from voting-machine vendors and explore options.
The machines would move the county to a hybrid electronic-paper system where voters use an electronic screen to vote with a paper printout.
As a decision hasn’t been made, a precise cost is unclear; however, Kale-Pesta said she submitted a rough estimate of $3.2 million to the state. With an 80-20 split, that would cost the county about $640,000.
The county previously purchased a touch-screen voting system in 2002. In 2011, it switched back to paper ballots.
At that time, the county entered into a lease-to-own agreement for optical-scanner machines to count paper ballots, which Kale-Pesta said would be compatible with new machines.
A lease-to-own agreement would be a possibility for new machines, which Kale-Pesta predicted would take the county through 2030.
The county’s practices are under the scrutiny of the secretary of state, who ordered a “formal internal review” Wednesday after the board distributed “final unofficial” results that double-counted more than 6,000 early-vote ballots to the media and others on election night.