Cavanagh seeks central storage location fo county voting machines
Thirty-two percent of Fayette County’s 700-pound voting machines are stored at polling places year-round, a practice that Commissioner Sean M. Cavanagh said should be changed, based on input from an expert in the field. While 144 of Fayette’s 212 machines are stored in a secured room at the Fayette County Bridge Department, 68 of them are kept where they are used, according to Larry Blosser, the chief machine technician at the county election bureau.
Those locations include places like the Belle Vernon Apartments, a senior citizen high-rise; the community room of South Hills Terrace, a public housing complex; the East Side fire station in Connellsville; and the Connellsville Township Volunteer Fire Department.
Machines also are stored year-round at Divito Park in Leisenring, the Mountain Fellowship Center in Markleysburg, Harvey McClelland’s garage in East Millsboro, Wilma Rhodes’ garage in Martin, John Butcho’s garage in Grays Landing and the Ruth E. Wilson residence in Whitsett.
Cavanagh said he spoke Friday to Dr. Rebecca Mercuri, a professor at Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia who is an expert in the field of elections.
“She said it’s a bad practice. She was kind of stunned when I told her that some of them are stored in garages or left in a hall somewhere,” said Cavanagh, who advocated moving all the voting machines to a central storage
location. “I think it should be (done). We have the storage capacity out there at the bridge department. I never did like the practice, ever. I always did talk about (changing) it.”
Blosser, who has worked 22 years in the election bureau, said he makes three pre-election visits to service each machine before a primary election and two such visits before a general election. He said the machines have two manufacturer-installed seals and a built-in usage counter to ensure against tampering.
Blosser said the main reason some voting machines are left in the field is because doing so makes the task of moving them back and forth twice a year less costly and time consuming.
Fayette County has 105 voting precincts.
However, in neighboring Westmoreland County, 732 similarly sized voting machines used in 306 precincts are centrally stored in one building and have been stored by the county for at least nearly three decades, said election bureau employee Bill Gilmore.
“We have all of ours stored in one building, and we transport them each election,” said Gilmore,
who noted that in his 28 years of working with the bureau, it has “never” left machines at the polling place.
Allegheny County elections division manager Mark Wolosik said his department covers 1,300 polling places using 2,815 machines that weigh 850 pounds each.
Wolosik said that approximately 800 of them, or 28.4 percent, are stored on site at polling places, while the remaining 2,000 or so are centrally warehoused by the county.
“We store on site what we can; the rest are stored in a warehouse,” said Wolosik. “Rather than moving an 850-pound voting machine twice a year, if a place permits you to store them, it’s less machines you have to move.
“I don’t know if we’d be able to store all of them or haul all of them. We haul 2,000 voting machines in five days (as it is). That’s pretty good.”
Washington County uses a punch-card voting system that doesn’t require use of heavy voting machines, said an election bureau spokeswoman.
Before that, the county used paper ballots, she said.
Greene County uses electronic touch-screen voting devices and also used paper ballots before purchasing those suitcase-sized devices.