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Ohio County’s $1M new voting machines arrive

Intelligencer/Wheeling News-Register photo by Joselyn King Ohio County maintenance worker Donnie Milliken, left, and Toni Chieffalo, coordinator of elections in the county, help unload new voting machines at the City-County Building in Wheeling.
Intelligencer/Wheeling News-Register photo by Joselyn King
Ohio County maintenance worker Donnie Milliken, left, and Toni Chieffalo, coordinator of elections in the county, help unload new voting machines at the City-County Building in Wheeling.

WHEELING, W.Va. — More than $1 million worth of new voting equipment arrived in Ohio County this week.

County maintenance workers and employees with the Capitol Express courier service transported 42 ballot boxes and 177 touchscreen voting machines into the City-County Building, then took them up to the fourth-floor law library for storage. Arriving earlier were 144 poll books that will be programmed with voter registration data to be used by pollworkers at voting precincts.

County commissioners in October approved the purchase of the new voting equipment from Election Systems and Software at a cost of $1,024,000, including a $512,000 down payment and four annual installments of $128,000.

The new system replaces the county’s current voting system that has been in place since 2004, and the new technology will be in use for the May 10 primary election.

Candidate filing for the election ends Saturday, and Toni Chieffalo, coordinator of elections in Ohio County, said work will begin Monday to program the county’s primary ballot information into the machines. County employees also will begin to program voter registration data into the new electronic poll books after Monday.

The biggest change from the old voting system is that voters now will receive a printout of their finished ballot from the machine after they complete their election choices. This receipt then will be scanned and placed into the ballot box.

Pollworkers will have access to computerized tabulated results, but the receipts also provide a hard copy paper ballot backup if needed.

The Ohio County Commission office is located on the second floor of the City-County Building, and candidates interested in filing for the primary election may bring their applications there between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. though Friday.

The office also will be open on Saturday, but only until 2 p.m. This is a change from past election years when prospective candidates could file in person there up until 5 p.m.

Candidate filings also can be mailed to the commission office, but they must be postmarked prior to midnight Saturday for the candidate to be eligible for the primary ballot.

Elections also are happening in the city of Wheeling, and the city clerk’s office also is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Friday to accommodate candidates. City Clerk Janice Jones said she will be in the office until noon on Saturday to accept last-minute filings.

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