York County unveiled their new machines to poll workers at a training session Wednesday.
"It's going to be a learning curve for both poll workers and the voters," Sally Kohlbus, Asst. Director of Elections of York County, said. "But we hope it goes fairly smoothly."
The county spent $1.4 million on 180 voting machines and ADA units for people with disabilities. The PA Department of State directed all 67 counties to purchase and implement new voting systems that provide paper records by the 2020 primary.
Kohlbus said it was about time anyway. The last time they bought new ones was back in 2006. The old way to vote involved touch screens. The new way -
"Paper ballots," Kohlbus laughed. "It's kind of like 'Back to the Future."
But this way is supposed to be more secure.
"If there's any problems we actually have the actual paper ballot that was filled out that we can either re-scan or re-count if there's question," Kohlbus said. "Or we can actually count them by hand."
You'll get in the proper line based on your last name and sign in. You'll be given sharpie and a folder with the ballot inside. After it's filled out behind a privacy screen, you'll get in another line, hopefully a short one, to feed it into the new machine.
"All you do is feed the completed ballots in here," Casey Brady, York County Voting Technology Coordinator, said. "And it'll either accept them, or it will spit them back out if you really screwed up. Or it'll hold them kind of up top here before it drops it in and tell you what you did wrong and ask if you want to fix it or just cast it as is."
"It's just kind of one of those things," Sharon Witmer, Judge of Elections in Dover, said. "Change happens. You just deal with it and everybody came around to the old machines so I think these will work fine too."
A pen cannot be used to cast your vote. The machines won't read the ink. It must be a sharpie. For people with disabilities, there is that touch screen unit available that prints out a paper copy.
York County Elections voting system demonstrations for the public:
Monday, Oct 7. 10am-1pm - Paul Smith Library, 80 Constitution Ave., Shrewsbury
Wednesday, Oct 9. 10:30am-1pm and 4pm-6pm - Martin Memorial Library, 159 E. Market St., York
Wednesday, Oct 16. 8:30am-noon - Heritage Senior Cetner, 3700-4 Davidsburg Rd., Dover
Wednesday, Oct 16. 3:30pm-6:30pm - Dover Area Community Library, 3700-3 Davidsburg Rd., Dover
Thursday, Oct 17. 3:30pm-6:30pm - Jacobus Village Library, 35-C N. Main St, Jacobus
