Electronic voting machines result in quicker College Park election results

A TV outside the voting room plays an instructional video on how to use the voting machine.

Voters experienced very few technical difficulties with the new electronic voting machines during the Nov. 3 College Park elections. 

The College Park Board of Election Supervisors recommended using machine-readable ballots this year because every race was contested for the first time in more than 20 years. Due to the competition, voter turnout was expected to increase from the 2013 election, in which District 3 saw the highest voter turnout of all four districts — 15.9 percent of registered voters showed up to the polls. 

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Jack Robson, chief of the College Park Board of Election Supervisors, said he hoped the machines would speed up the vote-tallying process. Last election, results were in by 11 p.m., but there was a counting error that had to be corrected in the morning. 

This year, the College Park Board of Election Supervisors improved its accuracy and speed, as election results were reported by 9:30 p.m. Tuesday. 

“We’re sure that this process will get us out of here much quicker,” said Dave Milligan, a former District 1 councilman who announced the voting results. “We should all get out of here at a decent time tonight.” 

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The city also provided braille ballots so blind voters would be able to cast their votes with ease this year. Robson said City Hall had one blind voter.

Robson said the electronic process ran “pretty smoothly” for its first year. 

After audience members at the election results announcement gave their general approval for the new ballots, Robson said he thought everyone liked them.

Robson also said he was surprised by District 3’s voter turnout. Of 2,137 voters counted in the preliminary election results, 815 were from District 3, a turnout of 16.6 percent of the district’s registered voters.

“We have seen higher, but it was the highest turnout for all the districts,” Robson said. “We all anticipated more candidates. It really depends on how many candidates are running and stuff like that. You can see that District 3 is the highest, and the second-place council member could change tomorrow — 29 absentee mailed ballots and six provisional on-hand ballots are still out.”

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The council approved spending up to $15,000 on equipment, services and software for the voting machines. However, the election’s final cost was $16,000, Robson said.

Despite the smooth process of casting machine-readable ballots, the announcement of election results was more suspenseful as city officials manually entered voting results into a spreadsheet, which Milligan read to audience members. City officials had some difficulties reporting results when manually entering the data. 

Senior accounting and finance major Kevin Fryc said he thought the use of the voting machines went smoothly. District 3 resident Wendy Kelley, 30, also said she thought the electronic polls were “fast and easy.”

District 3 resident Howard Chasanow, 78, said he preferred the traditional voting style.

“I thought it was interesting, but I prefer simple levers,” he said. “But it was fairly user-friendly.”

Thalia Doukas, 67, said she thought the machines were easier to use and preferred using them over more traditional ballots. 

“It was very user-friendly,” the District 3 resident said. “It was very quick compared to other sorts of ballots where you’re reading long texts about amendments or whatever, it was really, really simple.”