Next year it's punch, press or pull
Highland County is ending its pencil-only ballot practice; will switch to voting machines

BY CALVIN R. TRICE   Richmond TIMES-DISPATCH Jun 15, 2005

Voters in Highland County are the last in Virginia to cast pencil-only ballots. But this will be the last year that locals can vote only by marking boxes.
 

MONTEREY Ask Highland County officials to show you the local voting equipment, and they're likely to reach into a desk drawer and pull out a No. 2 pencil.

Registrar Alice Shumate whipped out a half-sized pencil and joked, "We've used this one for a lot of elections."

Voters in Highland are the last in Virginia to cast pencil-only ballots. The voters entered the 21st century without having to touch a screen, press a button, punch a card or pull a lever. But this will be the last year that locals can vote only by marking boxes.

Federal law mandates that next year Highland County include voting machines to make balloting more handicapped-accessible. Highland has no more than 10 handicapped voters, and they can still cast absentee ballots or vote outside the precincts, said Don Ferrell, chairman of the elections board.

Officials expect one voting machine in each of the county's six precincts as an option to accompany paper ballots.

State and federal funding will cover the cost of the machines. But election workers such as Maxine Huffman, secretary of the Highland Board of Elections, will lose some confidence in the process.

"It's the most accurate way to count votes," Huffman said of paper ballots.

Highland's roughly 2,000 registered voters typically turn out in the 80 percent range for major elections, Shumate said. No longer will they be able to shake their heads at voters elsewhere compromised by ambiguous chads and mechanical breakdowns.

The election board will choose the new machines by next year. There's talk of having them ready to demonstrate at the 2006 county fair.

"I don't know how the older people will feel about it," said Maxine Shultz, who has worked local elections since 1967. Yesterday, she sat with three other election workers at a precinct southwest of Monterey in the fellowship hall of Beulah Presbyterian Church.

"But I think it'll work just fine," Shultz said.

"I do too," election worker Patsy Hull chimed in.

Monterey resident Kenny Herold, who voted yesterday, said he had no problem with new voting devices.

"Sounds good to me. Everybody else seems to be doing it," he said.

Because the federal law doesn't cover municipal elections, Monterey's tradition of write-in voting for the Town Council will remain, Huffman said.

Huffman is concerned about recruiting the 48 people the board needs for election work. Recruiting enough people has been difficult in recent years and the need for machine training might make solicitations harder, she said.

"It just makes you wonder how we're going to manage," she said.