Many electors will see changes in voting machines ballots this year

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by Melanie Stake,

Town of Dakota Clerk

When it comes time to vote in 2022, don’t be surprised if the voting machine you use at the polls—and your ballot—look different.

Many of Waushara County’s municipalities purchased new voting machines, and they will be in use starting this year.

DRE vs. Optical Scan Machines

Prior to 2022, most of the county’s municipalities used direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machines or “touch screens.” People viewed their ballot on a screen, tapped the screen next to the candidates they wished to vote for, and then reviewed a printout of their selections. Once verified for accuracy, this printout was recorded as their official ballot.

The new pieces of voting equipment are optical scan machines. All voters will receive a paper/hard copy ballot with all the election contests on that one ballot. In a voting booth, they will use the pen provided to fill in the oval next to each candidate they wish to vote for. Then, either the voter or a poll worker will feed this ballot into the machine. The machine will “read” the ballot selections and tabulate the votes.

The City of Wautoma and Town of Marion have used optical scan machines for many years, and the towns of Mt. Morris, Saxeville and Springwater have used them for the last few elections. The majority of municipalities in the state already employ this technology.

Reasons for the Switch

The DREs had many positive attributes, and worked well for Waushara County for more than 15 years. They were accurate, easy to use, and didn’t allow for voter errors such as overvoting or crossover voting. However, the machines were at the end of their lifespan, and manufacturers/vendors would no longer maintain them.

When federal COVID-19 funding became available in 2020, many municipalities seized the opportunity to use this money to replace their aging equipment. Waushara County municipalities chose to transition to optical scan machines for the following reasons:

Ease of absentee ballot processing. Though DREs were great for use at the polls on Election Day, they didn’t help tabulate absentee ballots. These ballots had to be hand-counted separately by poll workers. Hand-counting can be a time-intensive process that is prone to human error. Fifteen years ago, it wasn’t a big deal to hand-count the few absentee ballots that were cast. But absentee voting has increased exponentially over the years—even before the explosion of requests due to COVID. A more efficient way of counting these ballots was needed.

•Uniformity. Instead of some people voting on touch-screen machines and some people (including all absentee voters) casting paper ballots, now all voters will get similar-looking ballots. Absentee voters will no longer have to deal with multiple, separate paper ballots (one for federal, state or county contests, one for municipal contests, etc.). And, in most cases, all ballots—whether cast at the polls or by mail—can be fed into the optical scan machine for counting.

•Less contact. Voters rarely have to touch an optical scan machine. In the early days of COVID, a no-contact option was considered a way to minimize transmission of the virus.

Voting Equipment and Claims of Fraud

The new units in Waushara County are the ImageCast ® Evolution (ICE), equipment manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems. When these machines were purchased in October 2020, no one could have predicted that Dominion would be the target of fraud allegations in the 2020 Presidential Election.

Please note that NOT ONE of these claims has been substantiated.

In every instance where fraud lawsuits were brought

against Dominion, the courts struck them down. Dominion responded to these allegations by filing several billion-dollar defamation lawsuits against the players who made these accusations about its equipment.

MITRE Corporation, a not-for-profit research and development company, had its nonpartisan Election Security Lab perform a four-month review of election data in eight swing states—including Wisconsin—and it showed no anomalies. (For details, see https://www.mitre.org/sites/default/files/publications/pr-21-0431-data-analytics-to-enhance-election-transparency.pdf.)

You can see the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s (WEC) refutations of these claims—some specifically related to Dominion—at https://elections.wi.gov/faq, under “2020 Election FAQs” and “Election Integrity.”

Layers of Security

Be assured that all voting machines in Wisconsin—including the ICE—go through rigorous certification protocol before they can be used in the state, and they are audited at random after every general election. For details about this, go to the WEC website at https://elections.wi.gov/elections-voting/voting-equipment.

In addition, prior to each election, municipalities are required to test their machines for accuracy. These tests are public meetings that all are welcome to attend. Watch the Argus and/or your municipality’s website for notice of these public tests.

Finally: Waushara County’s voting machines are not connected to the Internet/WiFi, and therefore cannot be hacked into on Election Day.

 

Voting Machine

‘Open House’ Events

 

If you’re interested in seeing and testing the new voting machines before the April 5 Spring Election, check out the following “open house” events. You don’t have to be residents of these particular municipalities to attend. Clerks and poll workers will be on hand to answer any questions you may have.

Town of Aurora: Saturday, March 19, from 10 a.m. to noon; and Wednesday, March 23, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Held at the Aurora Town Hall, W2319 State Road 21, Berlin.

Towns of Dakota and Wautoma: Wednesday, March 23, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., at the Dakota Town Hall, N1470 State Road 22, Wautoma.

If you have questions or concerns about voting machines—or anything election-related—contact your municipal clerk (those in the Town of Dakota can email dakotatownhall@outlook.com or call 920-787-4875), or call the Waushara County Clerk’s Office at 920-787-0442.

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