Tired of flipping through pages and pages of names to sign in at your polling place on Election Day? There’s an app for that. Hamilton County, Ind., Elections Administrator Kathy Richardson wants the county to switch to an increasingly used electronic poll book system. But several Hamilton County Council members aren’t sure they’re ready to sign off on the idea. She is asking the council for about $414,000 to buy 220 iPads, polling software and related equipment. She also would need $30,500 in each of the next two years for software upgrades. If the request is approved, she hopes to have the system in place by May’s presidential primary.
Instead of leafing through polling books to find your name in alphabetized order, you would scan your identification card or driver’s license into an iPad. The software would check you in and relay that information to the county and state election offices.
Richardson believes electronic poll books would both speed voter check in and make it easier to catalog and audit who has voted. She said it now takes two staffers two weeks to get such voting data into the statewide voter registration system. She said that work could be done electronically in mere minutes with the new system.
Full Article: Will iPads Replace Election Poll Books?.