Scott County Auditor Roxanna Moritz announced today that voters in Tuesday’s City of Dixon special election will have the option to scan their state issued IDs to help check in at the polling place. This is part of Iowa Express Voter, a new electronic poll book program developed by the Iowa Secretary of State. Precinct election officials presiding over the upcoming City of Dixon Special Election will be the first in Iowa to use this new program.
“We are pleased that Scott County will be the first to use Iowa Voter Express in a live election environment,” Moritz said. “My staff and staff from Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz’s office have worked together to fine tune this new program. It has been a good example of intergovernmental cooperation, and will result in a good product that is easy to use,” Moritz said.
Iowa Express Voter includes an option for scanning a voter’s state issued identity card, either a driver’s license or non-driver’s identity card issued by the Iowa DOT or a voter registration card issued by the Auditor’s Office. The scanner will read information on the ID card and then put that information into the electronic poll book rather than having election officials hand enter the information. Scanning IDs is only an option and not required to process voters.
“We are very excited to try out the new scanning function,” Moritz said. “We always have a trade-off between election security and voter convenience, and scanners should help to increase the speed of processing individual voters,” Moritz said. “But our election officials are ready to hand enter the voter information too,” she said.
The program was designed to be user friendly for election officials, which increases the speed and accuracy of processing individual voters, making the voting process more convenient. “The reviews from precinct officials who recently trained on the new system have been very positive,” Moritz added.
Full Article: New electronic poll book program to debut In Scott County – Quad Cities Online.