DESOTO COUNTY, MS (abc24.com) - DeSoto County is in the midst of preparing for November's presidential election. A big part of that is getting the voting machines ready.
They should be good to go this fall, but the election commission is worried about how they'll hold up in the future. How will they get new ones? Just like you, they have to start saving.
"They're eleven years old," says Danny Klein, who works on DeSoto's Election Commission. He'd like November's election to be the last big one the county's ballot machines are used.
The commission has asked the board of supervisors to start saving for new ones. "We wanted to give them a good heads up so they can start putting money aside."
They hope to buy replacements in two to three years. DeSoto currently uses paper ballots, and Klein wants that to continue. "We wanted to have a paper trail," Klein tells abc24.com.
Staying with paper ballots is also cheaper. It's going to cost $450,000 for the county to upgrade their technology versus $2.5 million to switch to touch screens.
"We can use 50 scanners versus 640 touch screens," says Klein. He thinks paper ballots are also more reliable.
"We have the paper we can actually rebuild the election if we need to," he says. The county had to re-run a few ballots after a machine malfunctioned in last March's primary.
"Something like that had never happened before, then we had happen twice in two precincts."
That problem has been solved for November. But Klein is thinking ahead, hopeful new technology will make all elections run more smoothly in the future.
