Reply #7: End of an era [View All]

[MelissaB]

End of an era

Jersey County voters to use punch card ballots for last time

By LAURA PRANAITIS
The Telegraph

JERSEYVILLE -- Tuesday’s election will mark the last time Jersey County voters pick up a stylus and punch out a piece of cardstock to cast their ballots.

Jersey County Clerk Linda Crotchett said that after the consolidated election, the county’s punch card ballots and vote recorders officially will be retired and replaced with more high-tech, up-to-date optical scan machines.

"It is the end of an era," she said. "It’s going to be a little bittersweet after this election is over, because we’ll be saying goodbye to a voting method we have used for many years, but we’ll be moving into a change that we all hope and think will be for the better."

The county is making the change to comply with the 2002 Help America Vote Act, which was Congress’ answer to the 2000 voting debacle in Florida, when election judges studied punch card ballots with magnifying glasses to find "hanging" or "pregnant" chads.

Crotchett said although she and her staff are ready for the switch to a new voting system, it is frustrating that every county in every state using punch card ballots is required to change their machines because of problems in just one state.

"When I first learned that we had to do this, my first thought was, ‘Why spend all this money on new machines when ours still work just fine?’ But the integrity of the punch card system was challenged in the 2000 election, and the most important job of any election authority is to ensure that every voter’s ballot is counted and counted fairly," she said.

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"We’ve never had a problem with our punch card machines," she said. "When we first purchased them, we spent $26,000 for 115 punch card recorders and 30 demonstrators, and we’ve only had to replace a few machines over the years.

"I’d say we got our money’s worth out of this system," she said.

More: http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=14278880&BRD=1719&PAG=461&dept_id=25271&rfi=6