Special elections March 1 and March 8 will help make what could be a $30 million decision in Franklin County. Anyone can cast a ballot in those elections. You don’t have to be one of the county’s 854,000 registered voters or even an American to vote at the Board of Elections’ 1700 Morse Road location those two Wednesdays. You also can vote as many times as you want. Officials are using those two elections to test the two finalists competing to provide new voting machines for Franklin County. “This is so (voters) can touch it, feel it, see how it works,” elections spokesman Aaron Sellers said. “The purpose of this is to try to get feedback from the general public … so we can evaluate.”
The mock elections — each from 3 to 7 p.m. — also will give elections workers a chance to evaluate each system to see, for example, if they are easy to set up for poll workers and if the machines’ software works correctly as votes are cast. “We don’t want a complex system interfering with voters’ right to cast votes,” Board of Elections Director Ed Leonard said.
The new voting systems are needed because the current 4,375 Franklin County voting machines bought in 2005 are aging and need to be replaced.
The two finalists are Elections Systems & Software and Hart Intercivic.
Full Article: To Make a $30M Decision, Ohio County Turns to Mock Elections.