Tuesday's election marked a new era in Erie county. It was the first time new electronic voting equipment was used in a general election in the county. It's the first change in voting machines locally in nearly 100 years, but not everyone is a fan of the new technology. It did not lead to faster election results Tuesday night, and it created new privacy issues.
With the new system voters mark paper ballots and then the ballots are scanned electronically. Short three-sided cardboard partitions are the only protection voters have from prying eyes while they're marking their ballots. That left many voters with an uncomfortable feeling on Tuesday.
"We recognize that we have lots of work to do," says Erie County Board of Elections Democratic Commissioner Dennis Ward.
Board of Elections officials say the cardboard partitions were only a temporary fix as they got the new system up and running and by the next election they expect to have better solutions in place that offer more privacy. "There are numerous providers across the country that want to sell us a multitude of different types of polling equipment," says Ward, "We are going to be analyzing each polling site in the future and some will need a much different type of privacy accommodation."
The Board of Elections is also looking at ways to get results in faster once the polls close. The modern scanning technology does not offer the instantaneous tallies one might expect and that's because state law still requires inspectors to call in the results to the Board of Elections the old fashioned way.
"We always have situations where it's a long day, they (election inspectors) have just worked 16 1/2 hours, and the elections inspectors call the board and we only have 25-30 lines and if they're busy they try a couple of times and then they simply wrap up and go home," explains Ward. That's why even in this age of instant information election results sometimes are still not available until the next day. The elections commissioners say they are working on ways to speed up the process while still working within the confines of the law.
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