PRESCOTT - Supervisor Tom Thurman handed his ID to Desi Zurcher Monday morning during a demonstration of a new vote center at a Yavapai County Board of Supervisors meeting in Prescott.
Zurcher, an election office technician, ran it through the check-in system then asked if he would like to vote on a touch screen machine or paper ballot.
Thurman then received one from a ballot-on-demand printer nearby.
When Thurman asked what would happen if he tried to vote at a different vote center, Zurcher - who put together the poll worker training program - showed him his name highlighted in red as already having voted. "If people insist that they haven't voted, they can fill out a provisional ballot and that will be compared to the vote center data to determine which is valid," said Ana Trujillo, the Yavapai County Recorder.
The Board of Supervisors will vote at their meeting Monday, Nov. 21, on whether to use vote centers in upcoming elections.
"In traditional voting, you are assigned a polling place in your precinct where you have to go and vote in order for your vote to count," said Lynn Constabile, elections director for Yavapai County. "In a vote center, all the polling places are interconnected so you can go anywhere, vote, and your vote will count."
Supervisor Carol Springer asked what safeguards exist in the system. "It's always been a sore spot with me when I read about states like Illinois where lots of dead people vote," Springer said.
Secretary of State Ken Bennett, who attended the meeting, said his office receives information from Vital Records and passes it along to the counties each day.
"We receive information from the Department of Health Services about people who pass away, look through obituaries, and have spouses sign affidavits daily," said Karen McCracken, registrar of voters for the county.
Vote centers make sense for Yavapai County where 53 percent of registered voters cast their ballots by mail, reducing the need for polling places, Constabile said.
She noted that in 2010, the county reduced polling places from 95 to 50, and that vote centers would save the county more money, by reducing the number of polling places to only 30.
Two kinds of vote centers are proposed - urban and rural, Constabile said.
Urban vote centers in Prescott, Prescott Valley, Chino Valley, Dewey-Humboldt, Clarkdale/Jerome, Cottonwood, Village of Oak Creek, and Sedona would be near where people work, have as many as four check-in stations with the entire county's voter registration list loaded on them, touch screen machines, and ballot-on-demand printers so that you can choose whether to vote on the touch screen or on a paper ballot for your precinct, Constabile said.
Rural vote centers in Seligman, Ash Fork, Bagdad, Beaver Creek, Congress, Kirkland, Mayer, Williamson Valley, Cordes Junction, and Black Canyon City would have two check-in stations each, paper ballots for that precinct, and touch screen machines that contain all of the ballots anyone who lives outside that area would need, Constabile said.
If the board approves the vote centers, the department suggests using them in the upcoming Presidential Preference Election and renting the printers from the City of Phoenix for $15,000 for that election before determining if the county should rent or buy, Constabile said.
When Supervisor Chip Davis asked how long the ballot-on-demand machines could be expected to last, Constabile said they had a life cycle of at least five years and cost $60,000.
via: verde independent
