Ryan Teague Beckwith, staff writer
Wake County voters will stick with paper ballots.County commissioners decided today to buy new optical-scan ballot
counters and rejected a proposal for 13 additional touch-screen
voting machines.The decision led to applause from verified voting activists, who had
questioned the touch-screen machines’ reliability.Like other North Carolina counties, Wake’s machines were decertified
last year based on new state and federal standards. The county must
buy all new machines in time for the May 2 primary.Last week, the county’s Board of Elections requested that
commissioners approve using optical-scan ballots on Election Day and
touch-screen machines for early voting.They were concerned that hand-sorting the paper ballots from early
voting would be cumbersome and could lead to security problems. Touch-
screen machines would sort the results automatically.The touch-screen machines, which are similar to an ATM, are used in
Mecklenburg and Guilford counties, but have never been tried in Wake.Voting activists argued that the touch-screen machines would be more
expensive and less reliable. They said the machines’ thermal paper
trail would not withstand the rigors of a recount.“Why spend extra money for a dubious and experimental technology?”
said Andrew Silver, 64, a Cary epidemiologist.Commissioner Phil Jeffreys, a retired postal worker, said he was not
concerned about the difficult of hand-sorting an estimated 90,000
ballots after next fall’s Election Day.“I worked in a post office for 30 years and it’s not a lot (to
sort),” he said.County commissioners unanimously rejected the proposal and approved a
second request from the elections board to request all optical-scan
ballot counters.John Gilbert, chairman of the elections board, said that hand-
counting would be a temporary solution. He predicted that the
county’s vendor would eventually improve its ballot-counting
machines, making hand-sorting unnecessary.If not, he said the county can always switch to touch-screen machines
later.
Staff writer Ryan Teague Beckwith can be reached at 836-4944 or ');
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