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County leaders review equipment for voting

Mirror photo by Kay Stephens / Todd V. Urosevich (third from left), sales manager for Election Systems & Software, Omaha., Neb., on Tuesday demonstrated a voting scanner/tabulator for Blair County leaders (from left): County Administrator Helen Schmitt, Commissioner Ted Beam Jr., Assistant Administrator Nichole Hemminger; Director of Elections Sarah Seymour and Commissioners Terry Tomassetti and Bruce Erb.

Mirror photo by Kay Stephens / Todd V. Urosevich (third from left), sales manager for Election Systems & Software, Omaha., Neb., on Tuesday demonstrated a voting scanner/tabulator for Blair County leaders (from left): County Administrator Helen Schmitt, Commissioner Ted Beam Jr., Assistant Administrator Nichole Hemminger; Director of Elections Sarah Seymour and Commissioners Terry Tomassetti and Bruce Erb.

HOLLIDAYSBURG — Blair County leaders on Tuesday reviewed another piece of voting equipment that could change the ballot-casting practices county voters have used since 2006.

Earlier this month, commissioners looked at voting equipment presented by Dominion Voting of Toronto, Canada, and in the coming weeks, they will look at equipment from Hart InterCivic of Austin, Texas, the company that sold the county its current system.

On Tuesday, Todd V. Urosevich, regional sales manager for Election Systems & Services of Omaha, Neb., demonstrated the use of a precinct-based scanner/vote tabulator.

“Fifty-three percent of the votes cast in November were on some sort of ES&S equipment,” Urosevich said.

County leaders have started to look into new equipment anticipating they won’t be able, as of 2020, to get replacement parts for the current system.

The county also expects the state, at some point, will decline to certify votes cast in counties using computerized systems with no paper trail to verify accuracy.

In his presentation Tuesday, Urosevich showed commissioners a printed two-sided ballot with candidate names that could be marked and entered into a precinct-based scanner/vote tabulator. He also showed the option of a smaller ballot card that a voter could mark to reflect the selected candidates. Like the larger ballot, it could be fed into the same machine.

If the scanner/vote tabulator would stop working at some point, the equipment also has a place where ballots could be deposited for later review.

Commissioners offered no endorsement on Tuesday of the demonstrated unit, nor did they endorse any of the equipment that Dominion representatives showed earlier this month. They have referenced inclusion of the expense in a proposed bond issue borrowing, but they have yet to estimate the cost.

Urosevich advised commissioners that while he brought only one tabulator on Tuesday, his company has more equipment and options.

Once commissioners narrow their focus on what equipment they want, Urosevich suggested that he and the other providers be allowed to return and address that.

Forty-three counties in Pennsylvania have ES&S products, Urosevich said.

Director of Elections Sarah Seymour previously said that she would like the county to use new voting equipment beginning in November 2018 or the following primary. One of the reasons for that timeframe, she said Tuesday, is all equipment must be certified on the federal and state levels. Certification can take three to six months on the federal level and one to two months on the state level, she said.

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