Onondaga County Elections officials Thursday unveiled and demonstrated the new machines voters will use to cast their ballots in November. The Clear Ballot election management system replaces the previous machines dating back to the 2008 general election. Republican Elections Commissioner Michele Sardo says they chose a system that meets their strict criteria, including familiarity to voters.
“Something very similar where they're not going to walk in and say,' Oh my, how do you use this machine? This is totally different from what you've used the past 15 years.' So this is very easy to to use a little smaller, not much different than our Image Cast machines.”
Democratic Elections Commissioner Dustin Czarny says the system is also more efficient.
“You're going to see less lines at the scanners because it's quicker, less paper jams that happen on Election Day because the system is has a lot less moving pieces to it.”
He says 225 scanners and 175 ballot marking devices will be arriving at their warehouse next week. The state board of elections will perform what’s called “acceptance testing” later in the month. Czarny says one of the reasons they chose Clear Ballot over other vendors was the paper ballot.
“We still have and we'll always have an on in Onondaga County is hand marked paper ballots, that is our audit trail," Czarny said. "So if any of the technology goes awry, we still always have and will have for at least two years after an election, all of the ballots cast so they could be hand counted if needed and are hand counted in the audit and in the close races.”
Czarny says they also like Clear Ballot’s redundancy, design, and strong track record of updating their system. They also include an accessible voting machine for those with disabilities. Onondaga County allocated nearly $3 million for the upgrade, and the state kicked in about a half million. The old machines will be destroyed and recycled.
