The Marshall County Council has decided to pursue upgrades to its voting technology in preparation for November’s General Election.
Last week’s primary election brought a bit of an issue when tallying ballots cast on the machines. Marshall County transitioned to a vote center model with 12 polling sites and 20 poll pads to check voters into the location.
While lines moved quickly, Marshall County Clerk Debbie Vandemark says the county could really use additional poll pads.
“We had four sites that only had the one poll pad and with the lines we had, they really would have liked to have had two poll pads,” says Vandemark. “We did have those in what we thought were the least active sites, but those workers really would have liked to have had a second clerk checking people in.”
Marshall County experienced more than 40-percent turnout during the primary election, but the size of the ballots created a slight problem when it was time to tally the votes.
The number of contested races and a ballot question created more data that the capacity of the voting machines. This followed analysis of the ballots cast during the previous six elections. An analysis of the county’s capacity just prior to Election Day revealed the problem to Microvote, the company contracting with the county for the voting technology upgrades.
Microvote’s Steve Shamo says it only mattered on some of the machines.
“A variable that factors in is how many precincts in each of those machines are actually voted,” says Shamo. “For instance, your early voting machines I believe a few of them we were able to use the tally card and others we had to serial connect and that’s where we ran into complications.”
The proposal is to make the upgrades prior to November’s General Election and to pay for it in 2017.
The County Council agreed to the purchase of new poll pads and to make the upgrades to the voting machines. Council member Steve Harper says the Council doesn’t have a choice but to pursue the change.
