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Although
Cherie Poucher, the director for the
Wake County Board of Elections, had said
one option was to count paper ballots by
hand for the May 2 primary, the
three-man board decided Tuesday to
purchase machines.
There will be one optical
scanner for use with paper ballots (the
Model 100 at $4,995 each) and the
optical scan machine equipped for all
types of disabilities (the AutoMARK at
$4,950 each) at each of the county’s 189
precincts.
The board also decided to
purchase one of the touch screen
machines (the iVotronic at $3,395) for
the single one-stop voting location for
the primary, the elections board office
in Raleigh. The iVotronic accommodates
handicapped voters and can be programmed
for all the possible ballot choices in
the different precincts.
All of the machines are
produced by Election Systems & Software
Inc., the only vendor the North Carolina
Board of Elections certified for all the
state’s 100 counties. During a
demonstration earlier this month, the
ES&S representative assured the board
and Poucher it could deliver the
equipment in time for the primary.
The initial cost for the
machines is $1.9 million, but it does
not include a host of other necessary
equipment including the modems ($200
each) for the scanners, the tables ($400
each) for the AutoMARKs and memory cards
for the machines. There will also be the
cost of selecting a printer for the
ballots, training that printer at the
ES&S headquarters in Omaha, Neb., and
printing the ballots. The board also
voted to order a high-speed optical
scanner for the elections office to
handle the absentee ballots.
Poucher was not available
Wednesday for information about the
costs, but those will be reported here
next week.
The elections board office
manager, Joan Pia, said it was felt it
would be late now to decide on more than
one one-stop location, secure those
locations and staff them. There was a
very low turnout for the last comparable
primary in 2002, 88,000 people. People
will be able to ask for absentee ballots
by mail beginning March 13.
You can find the board of
elections at
http://www.wakeGOV.com or by calling
856-6240. |
