Voting machines for PA township

New machines are simple to use, Forbes tells Lackawaxan

By LISA CUTRONI

LACKAWAXEN, PA — The new voting machines are “as simple as 1,2,3,” residents learned at the January 18 Lackawaxen Township supervisors meeting.

“It actually takes you longer to get checked in than it does to vote,” Pike County Commissioners Chairman Harry Forbes said at a presentation about the federally mandated purchase of new electronic voting machines.

County commissioners have two weeks to decide between two companies—Advanced or ES & S—before purchasing roughly 60 machines for countywide use.

The machines costs approximately $3,000 each, and will be distributed to the county townships based on the number of district voters in each.

The county received a $207,507 grant through the federal government program Help Americans Vote Act (HAVA). One hundred and sixty thousand dollars, Forbes said, would be used to purchase the machines. The rest will go for training, making the machines handicap accessible and breaking down language barriers. Monies needed beyond federal funding will be subsidized by local taxpayers.

“We have only been given so much money by the federal government. [For] the voting equipment alone, some of the tallies have come up towards $400,000 to $500,000. I think we were given about $200,000 from the HAVA Act to accomplish this. So, we’ll have as much training as we can do and try to work it through between now and April,” Forbes said.

While the machines are simple in design and user friendly, Forbes said training would be necessary. How often and where have yet to be determined.

“The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was mandated by the federal government to have the new voting system in place by the April elections,” he said.

Forbes reassured supervisor Brian Stuart that the machines were effective and tamper-proof.

“It’s a computer; it has redundancy and back-up disks in it, and security codes. They actually scramble the votes so you can’t figure out who was voted for by the previous voter” he said.

The machines also come with individual battery packs in case of a blackout, and the county is considering purchasing additional surge protectors.

Parts of the grant money has also been used to divide the rapidly growing voting districts in Lackawaxen and Delaware townships.

For Lackawaxen, the dividing line runs almost directly down the middle of the township.

“The line breaks up in two ways, north of 590 and south of 590. Starting down in the river, it splits the township directly in half,” Forbes said.

“The unfortunate part is that people in the south portion, up by Hawley, will still have to come down to the Lackawaxen Fire House. There was no other way to do it with the census lines.”

Those in the north district will go to the Central Volunteer Fire House.

The changes will take effect for the November 2006 elections. The May 2006 primaries will still be held at the Lackawaxen Fire House.

Residents will be informed of their new district status, and receive information directing them to a particular voting area.

In other business, two conditional hearings have been set for February 8: Bates, regarding a hair salon in the Rowland Store at 6:30 p.m., and a Moss Creek subdivision at 7:00 p.m.