No hanging chads here Pittsfield goes high tech for Super Tuesday

By D.R. Bahlman
Berkshire Eagle Staff

PITTSFIELD For the first time in more than 50 years, Pittsfield residents will be using new voting machines when they cast ballots in an election.

The city's 14 new machines will make their debut on March 2 Super Tuesday.

Compact and designed for maximum simplicity and user-friendliness, the machines employ laser-based optical scanning technology to read paper ballots that voters mark and feed into them.

The devices will replace Pittsfield's current voting machines, some of which date to the 1940s, said City Clerk Jody L. Phillips. The old machines are unwieldy and heavy it cost about $5,000 to move them to and from polling places each election.

Dials and levers

Largely because of the old machines' reliance on a complex system of mechanical dials and levers, election results were sometimes difficult to obtain and verify promptly.

Some 56 of the machines regularly saw duty at the polls over the years; the city owns a total of about 80 of them, said Phillips. Specially trained members of the Fire Department maintained the machines, but some were beyond repair.

Officials are currently looking for ways to get the old machines off their hands. They're hopeful that they might be of interest to collectors.

"They're worth very little as scrap," said Phillips.

The new machines cost about $97,000 total, money that will be reimbursed to Pittsfield through a federal grant that is administered by the state. An additional $38,000 was spent on new booths that will help assure voters' privacy, Phillips said. A sliding curtain was designed into the old machines; the curtain closed and opened by operating a lever.

On March 2, voters will be asked to check in and will be given ballots, which they will mark in privacy and "feed" to the new machines in much the same way as they would use a photocopying machine, except that the ballot may be ed face up or face down and either end first.

"Secrecy sleeves" will be available to voters who wish to further assure their privacy when they carry their ballots from the booth to the machine, said Phillips. Plastic magnifying sheets also will be available to those who may have trouble reading the ballots.

In a departure from tradition, voters will be asked to check out as they leave the polls, Phillips said.

Ballots fed into the machines are stored in a locked compartment underneath the device, the city clerk said. Another advantage of the new machines over the old is that "actual ballots" could be reviewed in the event of a question about the accuracy of election results, she said.