Marcus Pena was present at Monday’s Commissioner’s Court meeting to explain his move away from printed poll books and towards the purchase of Electronic Poll Books.   He feels that the move will save the county money in a very short period of time.  Last fiscal year Austin County spent $3928.50 just to print out poll books for the county’s elections.  That figure is not counting the labor and comp-time that is also invested in the printing of the books.  Pena wants to tentatively start with two e-poll books to test them out during early voting and then gradually add more over time until the entire county is using the electronic version.  The cost for these two e-poll books is $2050 but, in the long term he feels that cost will be recouped quickly due to not having to print the equivalent paper poll book. 

The advantage of the electronic poll books, aside from the labor and printing, are that the process of checking voters in is greatly reduced.  The voter will simply take some form of valid Texas Identification and scan it with the e-poll book.  The voter’s information is immediately pulled up for the election judge to verify.  The voter then signs the pad and then moves on and votes.  Pena estimates the time it takes to do the process is about a minute versus looking through its paper equivalent which takes several minutes.  This time savings will allow the county to run elections with fewer poll judges being needed.  Pena sited the fact that it is getting harder and harder to find people willing to work the polls and that the majority of the people in the county who are willing to work are retired and aging. 

Judge Tim Lapham expressed his desire to possibly move a little faster than just the two e-poll books to get the county further along on the conversion process, possibly even being totally converted before the March election.  To convert all 18 precincts in Austin County with E-poll books would cost around $36,000 Pena estimated.  But, Commissioner Randy Reichardt pointed out that the county would also be able to consolidate some of the polling locations thus cutting the need for that many polling books and therefore reducing the price to go electronic.  Lapham then asked Pena if he would go back to see if he could get a cheaper rate on the e-poll books if the county were to buy sixteen to move the county completely digital by the March Elections.  Pena also explained that the county political party’s might also be willing to contribute to the purchase of the e-poll books as well. The item was tabled pending the information on the bulk purchase.

If you would like to know more about Electronic Polling Books, the National Conference of State Legislatures Website has some good information concerning the devices as well as additional reading sources.  The video below is the entire discussion that happened concerning the E-poll books at commissioner’s court on Monday.

 

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