The Adams County Municipal Election is on Tuesday November 5, and the Elections and Voter Registration office is busy preparing.
The election has races in each of the 49 precincts in the county as well as the six school districts. There are over 120 candidates on the ballots and there are 66,512 eligible voters.
The task is particularly complicated this round because the county has recently purchased new tabulator machines. These machines read and record the information on the ballots completed by the voters.
There is one tabulator for each precinct – as well as five backup machines. The machines were purchased, in part with funds from the state, at a cost of $5,850 each.
The new machines simplify the vote counting process and make the election results more secure.
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There is also one new ADA-compliant voting machine for each precinct. These machines use touch-screen technology and other techniques and produce a paper record for tabulation.
Election and Voter Registration Director Angie Crouse said the office had tested each of the new machines twice and conducted six training sessions for the poll workers.
The experience from the voters’ perspective will be the same as it has been. “The ballots will look a little different,” said Crouse, but the method of voting – blacking in circles using a pencil– remains the same.
New Vote Tabulator Machine
Municipal election judges will pick up the blank ballots and the completed mail-in ballots from the election office in the county courthouse on Monday.
As each voter submits his or her ballot, the tabulator will keep track of the votes. When the polls close at 8 p.m. on Tuesday the election workers will run the mail-in ballots through the tabulator. Then the judge will take the ballots and a memory stick with the final counts back to the courthouse.
Elections officials will read each memory stick into a computer, reporting the results to the state and posting them on the county website Tuesday evening.
For more information:
Website: http://www.adamscounty.us/Dept/ElectVoteReg/Pages/default.aspx
Phone: 717.337.9832
Email: acrouse@adamscounty.us
Charles (Chuck) Stangor is Gettysburg Connection's Owner, Publisher, and Editor in Chief. I would like to hear from you. Please contact me at cstangor@gettysburgconnection.org.