By Patricia Breakey
Delaware County, along with 18 other counties statewide, undertook a full rollout of new voting machines in Tuesday's general election, state Board of Elections spokesman John Conklin said.
The pilot project to test the new machines went well, Conklin said, with approximately 4,000 units used and only 29 problems reported.
Delaware County Republican Election Commissioner William Campbell said he couldn't understand why every county didn't take advantage of a low-turnout year to test the new voting system.
"All six of the people in our office agreed that the smart thing to do was to try the equipment when the turnout was smaller," Campbell said. "It gave the poll workers and the public a chance to get used to the new voting machines."
Campbell said he expects his department to have hours of discussion about how the election went and what adjustments need to be made.
"We wanted to see how it worked and how we can improve on it," Campbell said. "But we are glad it wasn't a gubernatorial or presidential election year."
Delaware County used 32 machines in the county's 59 districts for Tuesday's election.
Campbell said there was a major problem in Hamden that required sending technicians to install a unit in the machine, but otherwise there were only small glitches like paper jams that were easily remedied.
Otsego County was one of the 27 counties that undertook a partial rollout.
Otsego County Deputy Election Commissioner Lori Lehenbauer said the new machines were only deployed in the 117th Assembly District.
"We rolled out nine new machines in 14 election districts," Lehenbauer said. "It was wonderful. We had no problems."
Conklin said people adjusted well to the new voting format. He said 16 counties declined to take part in the pilot program.
"A lot of people were unnecessarily worried and concerned about voting on the new machines," Conklin said. "People heard the word computerized' and thought they couldn't do it. A lot of people are now reassured about how easy it is to use the new machines."
Campbell said one problem in several polling places was a lack of room. "This system requires more space due to the extra tables or voting booths people need to use to mark the ballots."
Campbell said he and Delaware County Democratic Election Commissioner Janice Burdick will consider moving a few polling places to larger rooms.
The other negative Campbell noted was the amount of paper the new system requires.
"It's tremendous, just a huge amount of paper," Campbell said. "But on the positive side, there is a paper ballot for every single voter which leaves very little room for any kind of cheating or fraud."
Campbell said he and the rest of the staff used a combination of a formula based on past election turnouts and guesswork to decide how many ballots to have printed for each town.
"The paper and printing is expensive, but I don't have the actual figures yet," Campbell said.
The new machines require fewer poll workers because election custodians are no longer needed, but technicians and a delivery team had to be hired and a delivery truck rented to deliver the machines for every election, he said.
Patricia Breakey can be reached at 746-2894 or at stardelhi@stny.rr.com.
