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Shari Brewer, Butler County elections bureau director, looks over a voting machine at her office in the government center. Brewer has been appointed to a state committee studying the cost of voting system technology.
County official looks at high cost of voting

The Butler County elections bureau director has been appointed to a state committee studying voting system technology over concerns about costs.

Shari Brewer, county elections bureau director, said the expense to maintain the current system is significant.

“It's just the matter of the cost,” she said.

The price tag to maintain the county's 506 touch screen machines is roughly $70,000 annually. Software support comprises $30,000 of that total.

Brewer said another issue is the age of the current machines, which have been in use since 2006 and have a life span of 15 years.

She said there is an estimated replacement cost of roughly $5,000 a machine, or well over $2 million in total.

An additional cost are the batteries for the machines, which run $100 each.

Under a state Senate resolution, the Joint State Government Commission was directed to form the committee, which includes state and county officials.

State Sen. Elder Vogel, R-47th, who was the prime sponsor of the resolution, said there is a need to address the cost for elections and aging equipment.

“These machines are wearing out,” Vogel said.

He agreed with Brewer that change is needed.

“We have to find new voting machines,” Vogel said. “We have to find a new way of doing things.”

Brewer said the most cost-effective change would be to do what some states do — eliminate polling sites.

She said the county could save at least $200,000 annually.

“We're looking at a substantial savings here,” Brewer said.

Three states — Colorado, Oregon and Washington — do not use voting precincts, relying on mailed ballots.

In elections having only mailed balloting, registered voters mark their ballots before placing them in a security envelope and mailing it inside a separate envelope.

“There would be drop boxes in the county,” Brewer said.

She explained voters would drop their ballots in the boxes, which would be collected daily.

The ballots would be tallied on Election Day. Once ballots are scanned into the system, they are sorted electronically according to the appropriate municipal races and referendums.

Brewer said that system already is employed when processing absentee ballots.

Recognition software would be used to identify voters' signatures on the outer envelopes.

Brewer said if there was a discrepancy, the voter would be called to verify the ballot was his.

She conceded people could have others cast votes in their names, but the same possibility currently exists with absentee ballots.

Another 19 states have provisions allowing for certain elections to be held by mail.

Brewer said Pennsylvania is a state needing election reform.

“We're behind,” she said.

To meet federal regulations, states using mailed balloting must maintain voting centers for people with special needs, such as braille ballots for the blind.

Brewer said Butler would do the same if it switched to mailed balloting someday.

If the state would not permit mailed balloting, Brewer said the second choice would be reducing polling places, leaving 10 voting centers across the county.

For the 2016 primary, the county spent $340,236 for 44 percent of registered voters, or 54,308. The average price per vote cast was $6.26.

Brewer said the cost is higher where there are fewer votes cast.

Cherry Valley had the lowest tally with 24 votes cast.

The total cost to hold an election in the borough was $2,916.81, which is broken down to $147.93 a vote.

Precinct 3 in Butler has the lowest turnout percentage with 27 percent, 333 out of 1,249 registered voters turned out for the primary.

The total cost to run an election in that precinct also was 2,916.81, so the breakdown was an average of $11.21 per vote.

Those breakdowns were higher for elections lacking a presidential race.

Paying for poll workers alone cost the county $77,415.

Brewer said along with the expense, finding enough workers to man the polls is an issue.

“It's a long day for them to sit there,” she said.

Brewer said leasing voting machines also is costly, with an estimated annual expense of $450,000 for a seven-year contract, $580,000 a year for a five-year deal and $900,000 a year for a three-year contract.

Brewer started expressing concerns about election costs in 2014, when she began analyzing the cost for the county to hold elections under the current system of poll workers and precincts.

The study originally was going to strictly focus on voting technology, but Brewer and her counterparts from Mercer and Lawrence counties talked with state officials representing those counties.

Glenn Pasewicz, executive director of the joint commission, said the immediate goal of the study, which is set to be done by the end of 2017, is to identify what technology is available for voting machines.

He said the state senators introducing the resolution decided to address the problem.

“The sponsors heard from people in their district expressing concern about aging machines,” Pasewicz said.

It comes down to timing for Butler County, which would have been in line to replace its machines in a few years.

“We're hoping to get 15 years,” Brewer said about the touch screen machines' life spans.

She said if the study is completed within the current time frame, there should be no problem,

Along with the committee, she has been appointed to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission Standards Board and has been designated a certified elections/registration administrator by the Election Center, a nonprofit association of voter registrars and elections administrators.

Brewer completed the 12-course program offered by Auburn University.

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