County to Get New Voting Machines

Fayette County Elections Administrator Donna Macik briefed the Commissioners Court last Thursday on a proposal to offer county-wide voting.

Currently, on election day, voters must cast their ballot at their home voting precinct. Under Macik’s proposal, voters could cast a ballot at any polling place, including the Fayette County Elections Office in La Grange.

“Let’s say you work in Brenham, but you live in Flatonia,” Macik said. “It’s election day, you have to be at work at 6 a.m. before our polls open, and you don’t get off till 6 p.m. It’s gonna be hard for you to get back there to vote. I know that your employer is supposed to let you off, but that doesn’t always happen. With that being said, if we do county-wide voting, they could stop in Round Top on their way home and vote.”

In addition, Macik said many voters try to vote at the Elections Office on election day. Under the current arrangement, Macik said she and her staff have to turn those people away and instruct them to vote at their home precinct.

“They show up at our place at maybe 20 minutes to seven and they’ve got to drive somewhere else,” Macik said. “But now there’s no way they can get there.”

With countywide voting, Macik said anyone would be able to vote at the Elections Office on election day.

To legally implement the program, Macik said she must first organize a focus group. Commissioners Court authorized her to do so. Macik said she is also considering consolidating Fayette County’s election precincts from 12 to eight. Macik said the focus group would weigh in on that decision.

In addition, Macik asked the Commissioners to purchase eight special ballotreading boxes for polling places. She said these boxes will speed up the vote-counting process on election night. Instead of running all of the ballots through a vote counting machine at the Elections Office after the polls close, the votes will already be counted. Election workers will be able to download the data when the boxes arrive at the office and access the vote counts much more quickly.

“If it doesn’t work for some reason, no problem,” Macik said. “We open up that box and we run it through the old way.”

She said Colorado County uses these boxes. At their last election, workers were done counting the vote by 10 p.m. on election night. Macik said Fayette County election workers didn’t get home until 2:30 a.m.

Macik said the machines will cost about $69,000, and she obtained a grant to cover the entire cost. Commissioners unanimously authorized the purchase.