Photo by Michael Kelly Washington County Board of Elections clerk Melissa Saltzwedel, left, and director Mandy Amos demonstrate how one of the county’s optical scanning voting machines works on Friday.

MARIETTA — Concerns earlier this year that Washington County might need to spend $750,000 or more on new voting equipment have been laid to rest after Gov. John Kasich signed authorization for the state to underwrite the cost of the machines throughout Ohio.

Washington County voters, however, will be using 12-year-old equipment in the 2018 mid-term election in November, and possibly into 2019. County board of elections director Mandy Amos said Friday the state funding is intended for replacement of the old equipment before the 2020 presidential election.

Board of elections member R. Glenn Ray said Friday the board was notified less than two weeks ago that the funding was available. The board, he said, is considering placing its orders before the primary elections in May 2019.

The county elections office currently has 54 M-100 optical scanning vote machines and about 50 Automark touch-screen machines, Amos said. All the equipment, she said, was acquired using Help American Vote Act money in 2006.

The M-100s, Amos said, have worked almost flawlessly for the past 12 years and are the machines used by most voters. The touchscreen Automarks are placed in polling locations primarily for use by voters with disabilities, she said.

The only problem the elections office has experienced with the M-100s is occasional paper jams as the ballot goes through the scanner and is ejected into a closed below, she said, and the jams are easily cleared by poll workers.

The scanners plug into a metal cabinet. The ballots are fed into the scanning bed by voters, the marks on the ballot are read and recorded and the ballot is sent into the closed cabinet below. A separate enclosure is available for write-in ballots, and in the event that the scanner fails, the ballots can be deposited into a third compartment for reading later.

The machine will alert voters who either don’t mark some races or accidentally mark multiple candidates in a race that allows only one candidate to be voted for.

“We’re pretty happy with these,” Amos said. “There are new ones that are similar.”

The machines are not connected to any internet feed, so there are no associated cybersecurity concerns, she said. The voting information is digitally recorded on an electronic card, which is locked into the unit until voting is complete and an election worker bearing the key unlocks it and removes the card. When the card is put into the machine, a seal is placed across the access port for additional security, she said.

The card is then sealed into a transparent envelope and transported to the elections office, where it is unsealed, plugged into another device and the information tabulated into the elections results.

Amos said the elections office staff have had several training sessions regarding cybersecurity. The database that includes voter registration information, for instance, requires two-stage authentication for administrative access.

Amos said the order for paper ballots will be sent to the printer – Garrett Brothers, a firm in the Dayton area – next week. The ballots cost 32 cents each to print, and the office will need to order about 22,000 of them, based on the 2010 midterm election turn-out benchmark, she said.

The office can purchase only machines approved by the state, and Ray said the board and election office staff has seen a barrage of equipment and sales pitches.

“We’ve been going to vendors, vendors have been coming to us, we’ve seen quite a few presentations, traveled to different places in Ohio,” he said. “We have seen a lot of equipment.”

The board hasn’t drawn up an estimate of the total cost, but Ray said the $750,000 provided by the state “is going to be real close.”

Washington County Commissioner Ron Feathers said Friday he was relieved the state was stepping up.

“We were wondering how to fund this, a few months ago thinking $750,000 or even $1 million,” he said. “We even went to the county auditor and asked about putting a levy on the ballot.”

The voting machine bill worked its way through the Ohio Legislature in mid-year, allocating $114.5 million to be distributed to counties based on a formula that included the number of registered voters in each. It was signed by Kasich July 30 but doesn’t go into effect until the end of October, 90 days after being signed.

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Washington County Elections

* Registered voters: 43,042 (as of May 8 primary).

* Number of voting machines: 54 M-100 optical scanners, 50 Automark touch-screens.

* Age of machines: Bought in 2006 using Help America Vote money.

* Amount allocated by state for new machines in Washington County: About $750,000.