Reply #27: Locals try hand at new voting machines

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Locals try hand at new voting machines
The Evening Sun





John Mort of Penn Township checks out the new electronic voting machines Tuesday evening at South Western High School. (Evening Sun photo by James Robinson)
By SEAN HILLIARD

Evening Sun Reporter

Benjamin Bollinger, 70, of Hanover, carefully approached the touch screen on the new electronic voting machine he examined at South Western High School.

His finger shook as he started to press the box for an imaginary candidate for borough council, but all of a sudden, he pulled back.

"Do I touch the person's name or the circle?" he asked Frank Prato, an elections judge for York County.

"Either," Prato responded, as he came over to help Bollinger.

The new voting machines here and nationwide grew out of the controversy in Florida during the 2000 presidential election, said Dale Dalton, technology coordinator for York County's board of elections. The federal government passed the Help America Vote Act in 2002, which says that lever voting machines can't be used anymore. It was also a measure to keep the country voting the same way – all sorts of different voting machines and processes were used in the past.

The new voting machines also have the ability to reconstruct the voting process of each individual machine and be used by the blind. They are simple but secure, officials said.

Before voters get to the machine, a card programmed to their party is given to them. The card can only be used once per voter, Dalton said, and has to be reprogrammed after every use.

"It's like an ATM," Prato said. "When you put your card in, it stays until the vote is recorded."

The voter then slides the card into a slot in front of the machine. Instantly, the option to vote along individual party lines comes up – all Democrat or all Republican.

The boxes then come up with each candidate for every race. After the voter selects candidates in a particular race, no more can be selected unless one is unmarked first.

When selections are complete, a review page comes up. If the voter selected the maximum number of candidates for each race, the summary box will be blue. If they only selected one candidate for a race where they could vote for more, the box will be red, and if they didn't vote for a candidate in a race, it will be yellow.

http://www.eveningsun.com/localnews/ci_3707111#