Butler County will debut new voting machines

Published 3:38 pm Friday, May 30, 2014

Butler County Probate Judge Steve Norman demonstrates how the county’s new voting machines work. (Advocate Staff/AndyBrown)

Butler County Probate Judge Steve Norman demonstrates how the county’s new voting machines work. (Advocate Staff/AndyBrown)

When Butler County voters cast their ballots on Tuesday, they’ll do so with the help of brand new voting machines.

Butler County Probate Judge Steve Norman said upgrade was long overdue.

The new machines, which work like a digital scanner, save a copy of each ballot onto a thumb drive stored in the machine.

Email newsletter signup

“The old machines could only scan lines,” Norman said. “This takes a picture of every ballot, so in November when we have the General Election and we have write-ins we can actually go back through on the machine and look for write-ins rather than sort through all the paper ballots like we had to do in the past.”

All 26 precincts will utilize the new machines. The cost for the county to rent the machines is $75 per machine.