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MAYVILLE – Tuesday was historical in the annals of elections; for the first time all Chautauqua County schools voted on optical scan paper ballot based voting machines.
School election voters in Brocton, Clymer, Dunkirk City, Falconer, Fredonia, Frewsburg, Randolph, Southwestern and Westfield voted on paper ballots for the first time. In May 2015, these same voters didn’t know it, but they would historically be the last voters to cast ballots in Chautauqua County on the now out of service mechanical lever voting machines.
Bemus Point, Cassadaga Valley, Chautauqua Lake, Forestville, Jamestown, Panama, Pine Valley, Ripley Sherman and Silver Creek central school districts had converted to optical scan paper ballot voting for past elections.
The conversion to paper ballot optical scan voting started with the contested Bush vs. Gore presidential election of 2000. The U.S. Congress answered the contested election with the Help America Vote Act of 2002 that mandated the replacement of outdated voting equipment for federal elections. In turn, New York state mandated optical scan paper ballot elections in 2010. Some school districts and villages continued the option of using the old lever voting machine under short term extenders approved by the state legislature. This year the state finally agreed to no longer extend the option of using the old lever voting machines.
The Chautauqua County Board of Elections provides optical scan voting machines and programing to the schools at no cost to the district voters. Costs for ballots, transportation of the voting machines and election inspectors are, however, calculated for each election and billed to the school districts. The County BOE is one of just six county election boards that print ballots in house at a fraction of what other counties pay for outside ballot printing, saving districts thousands of dollars on the cost of holding any election.
“Our policy all along has been to provide election services at the lowest cost and to be accommodating to the individual school districts unique methods of conducting school elections. Additionally, we fully respect the fact that we work for the school districts and that the school district clerk is the chief election officer for the school elections,” said Election Commissioners Norman P. Green and Brian C. Abram.