ExpressVote to debut at primary
By Alexa Zoellner azoellner@dailyunion.com | Posted: Monday, February 5, 2018
Jefferson County voters will have a new option for voting starting in the Feb. 20 primary election. The ExpressVote Universal Voting System will replace the AutoMARK as the machines used by the county. Above, trainees test out the new machine. Left to right are Laurie Mueller, Village of Palmyra clerk; DeeDee Morateck, Village of Palmyra deputy clerk; Samantha Stenli, Town of Sumner chief inspector; and Rosemary Olson, Town of Sumner election clerk. For more photos click here.
JEFFERSON — Voters across Jefferson County will have a new option for voting in the Tuesday, Feb. 20, primary election.
The ExpressVote Universal Voting System will replace AutoMARK as the machines used by the county to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). However, the ExpressVote can be used by persons of all abilities.
Each polling place will have at least one ExpressVote machine.
“Some of the municipalities have purchased additional machines,” Jefferson County Chief Deputy Clerk Audrey McGraw said. “The county bought one for each polling place and then, if they wanted additional ones, that was on them.”
Both the AutoMARK and ExpressVote machines are produced by Election Systems & Software (ES&S).
Many of the ADA features remain with the ExpressVote, including zoom, high-contrast, an audio ballot (sounds generated onsite to ensure correct pronunciation) with headphones and a touchscreen. Also, it is compatible with other devices people use to vote.
“(The ExpressVote machines) basically are marking devices, so they are acting as a pen,” McGraw said. “The AutoMARK was also a ballot-marking device, but it needed an ink cartridge. and half the time the ink would be dried out so it wouldn’t mark the ballot properly and then it would jam and it just wasn’t very user-friendly.”
However, ExpressVote does not have a mechanical printer. Instead, it has a thermal printer, which is meant to maintain a paper ballot and, at the same time, reduce the size and weight of the machine.
With the AutoMARK, an actual ballot had to be inserted. The ExpressVote prints on a blank piece of thermal paper.
The final printout includes machine-readable barcodes and human-readable print.
One barcode allows the DS200 precinct vote scanner and tabulator, which is used to count votes, to read the ballot style. The smaller barcodes stand for the voter’s selections. A ballot style is specific to where a person resides and will be selected by a pollworker, if necessary, to avoid confusion.
A review screen at the end of the process, prior to printing, allows a voter to look over his or her selections and change any votes he or she wishes.
ExpressVote does not allow a person to overvote in an election. If a person tries to vote for more than the maximum number of choices, the machine will deselect the previous choice.
If a person decides to undervote in an election, which is allowed, ExpressVote will notify the voter that he or she has undervoted and ask if he or she wishes to continue. The undervote then will appear in the review screen as a different color so it stands out.