Sixteen hundred ballots were counted in the first three days of voting using new machines in six Georgia counties, and operations have been “seamless,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in a news release.
“We’ve been pleased that the performance in the field has matched what our tests and evaluations told us, that this system is a good one,” he said.
The pilot during municipal elections is designed to test the new system under actual, working conditions in six counties: Bartow, Carroll, Catoosa, Decatur, Lowndes and Paulding. It’s Georgia voters’ first use in an actual election of a paper-ballot system that lets them enter their choices on touch-screen terminals that print paper ballots for their review before casting, the release states.
Cobb County is testing the new ballot scanning system on hand-marked ballots.
“Voter surveys are 95 percent positive,” said Deb Cox, supervisor of elections in Lowndes County.
The added security of a printed ballot appeals to voters, Raffensperger said, and is a primary reason for replacing the state’s 17-year-old touch-screen voting machines now in use elsewhere.