Warren County’s Board of Elections formally signed off on the purchase of an additional 20 voting machines.

The county commissioners — who serve as the board except for when they’re up for election — agreed to the change weeks ago, but affirmed the move as the Board of Elections on Wednesday.

Elections Director Lisa Rivett said the additional machines increase the county’s lease cost from approximately $65,000 to $75,000 annually.

“We feel confident that the additional 20 machines will shore up the stock and it’s sufficient to conduct at the very least a primary election in 2020,” Commissioner Jeff Eggleston said.

Rivett cautioned that there will still be “long lines” for a presidential election but said that “going back to the number of machines we used to have… is going to make a difference.”

Merging polling places

The board also signed off on merging the Warren South precinct into the Warren West precinct located at St. Joseph Catholic Church. Rivett noted that the precinct would mirror the arrangement at Holy Redeemer where the precincts share a space but are operate separately.

Canvassing

The board discussed the counting process — both on election night and in the following days when write-ins are adjudicated and counted.

Rivett said that absentee and mail-in ballots can’t be opened until polls close on election night. So people are needed to handle that process.

Last fall’s write-in adjudication took all of Friday and bled into Saturday but Rivett doesn’t think that process will take as long this cycle because there won’t be as many write-in votes.

“I can’t see Friday being as blown up as it was last time,” she said.

Printed ballots

Rivett said the county has always printed its own ballots.

But the question now is how many to print, especially in a presidential election cycle.

“What’s the policy for getting a hold of them,” Commissioner Jeff Eggleston asked.

Rivett said if someone asks for a paper ballot, they should be given one.

But hand-marked ballots can’t be scanned with the printed ones and will have to be sorted out of the ballot boxes.

Eggleston suggested the paper ballots be printed in a different color and noted that he “would rather put a mountain of paper ballots” at each precinct in response to long lines.

“Some of the things that created lines last time,” Solicitor Nathaniel Schmidt said, “won’t certainly be alleviated.” He specifically cited people’s lack of familiarity with the machines.

Results

The commissioners had previously discussed not posting real-time election night results and again concurred that warrenvotes.com won’t be used for that purpose anymore.

Schmidt noted that might result in more people coming to the courthouse on election night to observe.

Machine functionality

Eggleston suggested “removing some of the errors that appear on the machines to streamline the voting process.”

Those warning messages pop up when a voter under-votes or leaves an office blank.

“Even to the very end, (I was) questioning ‘Did I really vote for what I wanted to?’,” Eggleston said.

Commissioner Ben Kafferlin suggested that Rivett reach out to the machine company to see if that’s an option as well as what it might cost. Rivett noted that those warning messages might be part of what was certified by the state and federal government and, thus, can’t be changed.

Meeting schedule

Moving forward, the Board of Elections will meet preceding the first monthly commissioner’s meeting – the second Wednesday of each month at noon.

The meetings “would only happen when we need it,” Kafferlin noted.