Election officials: new Dominion voting machines aced their first election

Stark elections officials say the initial deployment of the county's new roughly 1,400 Dominion ImageCast X voting machines went better than expected in Tuesday's general election.

Related: Board of Elections: New Dominion voting machines tested and ready for Nov. 2

"We had mostly positive responses to (the machines) because the screen is bigger and the brighter. And the voter-verified voter trail (the printout showing voter's choices) lights up so people can see it," said Regine Johnson, the deputy director of the Stark County Board of Elections, a Democrat.

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"It's fairly similar to the previous (TSX voting machine) so it's a newer generation. So it wasn't a big change for most of the voters."

The controversial purchase of the machines became a political tug-of-war in 2021 between the Stark County elections board and county commissioners, resulting in a lawsuit and an Ohio Supreme Court ruling ordering commissioners to buy them.

Johnson said voters did not seem to experience much of the learning curve she thought might be required.

"We didn't get a whole bunch of phone calls. And we thought we would because they were brand new," Johnson said.

Stark County Board of Elections Chairman Samuel Ferruccio, a Democrat, said the reports he heard were positive.

"I think they worked really well and the staff did a great job in getting those machines ready for use," he said. "There may be some tweaks that we want to do. But all in all, it was a great election. It went very smooth."

Travis Secrest, the Republican administrative assistant of the Stark County Board of Elections, said a few poll workers had some difficulty inserting paper properly into the machines, which allow voters to verify their choices before submitting their ballots. In a some other instances, the power cables for the printers weren't properly connected.

Secrest said the poll workers were able to resolve the issues by calling the Board of Elections office or a technician fixed it. Secrest said he could not say specifically which polling locations had these situations, which he said are common in every election. He said in those few cases, voters simply used another machine.

"After we get those initial calls (from poll workers reporting issues) we get in the morning, the phones were pretty quiet most of the day .... which is a good sign," said Secrest.

Stark County changes pickup process

In the past, Johnson said, workers had to bring the voting machines to one of four drop-off locations after polls closed to make it easier and faster for a moving company to scoop them up and bring back to the Board of Elections warehouse. Otherwise, the company would have needed more time to visit all 111 polling locations. And the poll workers would be unable to leave the polling location for hours until the pickup.

This election, the poll workers left the machines at the polling locations in locked security cages. The movers then picked up machines directly from the polling locations. Johnson said this new procedures saves the cost of having to provide staff, lighting and security at the four drop-off locations.

Meanwhile, after the polls had closed, a Republican and Democratic poll worker drove the USB drives in a locked case with each machine's voting results and any paper ballots cast at that polling location in sealed envelopes back to the Board of Elections office. They are not permitted to make any stops along the journey, even for a restroom break, said Johnson. Elections staff opened the cases, removed the USB drives or memory cards and loaded them into a server to quickly upload the results.

The number of votes from the USB drives and the paper ballots, including provisional ballots, can be reconciled with the records and the electronic pollbooks and records kept by the poll workers, Johnson said.

She said the entire process took place seamlessly and no USB drives turned up missing.

"Everything we expected to come back came back," she said.

Election Day hiccups

However, Election Day was not free of snags.

Mary Carey, of Plain Township, said she and her husband went to Grace United Methodist Church on Schneider Street NW shortly after 7 a.m. Tuesday.

Poll workers were unable to use the tablet electronic poll books to verify voter registrations and encode voters' plastic cards needed to call up the correct ballot on the voting machine. She said they gave the couple the choice of returning later or voting on a provisional paper ballot. They chose to vote provisionally.

"It was disconcerting," said Carey, a retired librarian, who added that the poll workers were abashed about the issues. "Frankly, I trust paper more than I do electronic voting. But the place wasn't really set up for people to sit down and do that (mark votes on a paper ballot). The lighting was bad. I had to go down and stand up under a light."

She said she and her husband used the church's musical stands to mark their ballots.

Johnson and Secrest said they did not know specifically what happened at Carey's polling location. Board of Elections staff would try to determine the circumstances and causes.

Johnson said no serious problems were brought to her attention.

Workers at a Jackson Township polling location reported difficulties encoding the plastic cards, said. But it turned out they had inserted the wrong end into the card reader. And the poll workers quickly corrected their error.

The Stark County Board of Elections acquired the voting machines after a legal battle with the Stark County commissioners who accused the board of failing to sufficiently seek lower price quotes on voting machines by Dominion's competitors.

The Ohio Supreme Court in May ordered the commissioners to fund the purchase, which cost the county about $1.48 million and the state $3.27 million for the machines, four ballot scanners, memory cards, tabulation servers and other voting equipment. That doesn't include more than $331,550 a year in maintenance and software support costs.

Reach Robert at (330) 580-8327 or robert.wang@cantonrep.com.

OnTwitter: @rwangREP.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Board of Elections: No major issues reported with voting machines