Most voters in the lightly attended primary Tuesday seemed to cope well with electronic voting, according to election officials in Otsego and Delaware counties.
``We had a problem with a lever machine in Oneonta, but that's been fixed,'' Sheila Ross, Otsego County's Republican elections commissioner, said Tuesday afternoon.
Local elections volunteers in the city of Oneonta reported some machine malfunctions Tuesday night.
Ross and Cindy Jarvis, the county's Democratic deputy elections commissioner, were on the road Tuesday going from poll to poll. Both said that from what they heard, voters seemed to have no problem with the new Imagecast scanners installed in the 117th Assembly District in the county.
The 117th District includes the towns of Cherry Valley, Decatur, Maryland, Roseboom, Springfield, Westfield and Worcester.
Otsego County's Board of Elections chose to install its new machines in those towns rather than the entire county this year, to iron out any wrinkles during the transition from lever machines.
In the Nov. 3 general election, voters in those towns again will use scanners, while most in the county will cast ballots the old-fashioned way one more time. Then next year, scanners will replace all lever machines.
Douglas Hamilton of Schenevus, the county's former Republican elections commissioner, voted in the town of Maryland and said he found the paper ballot easy to follow and the scanner easy to use.
Delaware County's Board of Elections opted to switch the entire county to scanners this year, and in the four towns that had primaries Tuesday _ Colchester, Sidney, Walton and Hancock _ no problems had been reported by midafternoon, according to Paula Schermerhorn, the county's Democratic deputy elections commissioner.
However, not everyone liked the change.
Jim Ainslie of the town of Otsego said he opted to try a scanner at the polling station in his town, ``and I think they took a big pile of taxpayers' money and turned it into a pile of horse dung.
``It took me about 20 minutes to vote there, reading instructions and all that.
``When you voted on a lever machine, you were in and out in less than a minute."
Ainslie said he will consider voting by absentee ballot in the future, to avoid the new technology.
On the other hand, Springfield town Supervisor Tom Armstong said: ``I like the new machines. It was easy and everyone there was in a good mood.''
Chatting with his neighbors took awhile, he said, but voting didn't.
``Of course, I went when they had a demonstration (of the scanners) back in August, so I knew what to expect,'' Armstrong said.
