The City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County are both beginning the switch to new digital-scan voting machines with paper ballots.
While only some locations in the City of Charlottesville will replace voting machines, all voting locations within Albemarle County will have new equipment.
The switch is in accordance with a 2007 law passed by the General Assembly mandating all new voting equipment to include paper ballots of some form.
The law allowed for precincts to use their old equipment until it needed to be replaced due to mechanical failure or normal wear, said Charlottesville’s General Registrar Rosanna Bencoach.
“We were going to have to buy equipment that would use optical scan ballots,” Bencoach said. “Those would be used in the event of a recount or contest.”
The two districts will benefit from the switch by having more efficient voting procedures, Bencoach said.
“It is much easier and more efficient to expand the number of voting stations when you're using privacy booths on tables,” Bencoach said. “You’re not limited by the number of machines, you're only limited by how fast you can process the line and how fast the scanner works.”
The new equipment will also give a certain security in election results. In the event of contested elections or a miscounts the court could use the physical ballots to measure results carefully, said Albemarle County General Registrar Richard Washburne.
“If there was a contested election the court could order the actual paper ballots and count it,” Washburne said. “That may be a little better measure of faith in the accuracy of the count.”
Despite the benefits, the new voting procedure will add costs for the districts since the voting offices must buy and print more paper ballots.
“Paper ballots are not cheap,” Washburne said.
Overall, the new machines are not expected to impact voter turnout or the process of voting itself.
“It’s a very familiar system,” she said. “[Voters] put their ballot in and in a matter of a few seconds it'll process and they’ll hear it hit the bottom, and people who are looking very stern will break into a big smile.”
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