New Oconto County voting machines rolled out and ready

OCONTO — The first election using Oconto County’s brand-new voting machines is a small one, but County Clerk Kim Pytleski isn’t taking any chances.

With a state Supreme Court primary the only race to be decided Tuesday, Pytleski said she would usually order enough ballots to cover about a 6% voter turnout. She ordered for 25% just in case.

“I would love it if we had a 25% turnout. That would be spectacular,” she said Friday. “I don’t anticipate that.”

Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly is facing a challenge from Jill Karofsky, a Dane County circuit judge, and Ed Fallone, a Marquette University law professor. The two top vote-getters will advance to the April 7 election with a 10-year term on the state’s highest court at stake.

The expected light turnout will help municipal clerks and poll workers — and voters — become familiar with the newly purchased ImageCast Evolution precinct tabulation hardware. It replaces the Edge system, where people voted electronically on a touchscreen, and their choices were printed out on a roll of paper that served as the official record.

Except for the towns of How, which will make the switch in April, and Underhill, which will get new machines later this year, voters next week will be handed a paper ballot to mark and then feed into a single machine to count the votes electronically.

The local clerks went through a training session last month before the machines were distributed around the county. Pytleski said it’s been a positive experience so far but admits there’s a level of anxiety.

“It is not easy to move from one piece of equipment to another at any point, but in a presidential year — four elections — there’s just a lot of added stress simply from what’s on the ballot,” she said.

The Edge machines were in place already when Pytleski became county clerk more than 10 years ago, and she said they served the county well over that decade.

“With all the recounts and recalls and everything that we had, it was spot on, because you can’t accidentally cross over party lines or overvote a ballot or things like that,” she said.

Those kinds of user error are now a greater possibility. If a voter makes a technical mistake like voting for both a Republican and a Democrat in partisan primaries, the machine will reject the ballot. Poll workers will then “spoil” the ballot and give the voter a new sheet; voters have up to three chances to get it right.

“The biggest message I’m asking voters is to have patience,” Pytleski said. “What I’ve told all of the poll workers is to slow down.”

Officials prefer that voters use the pens that will be placed in the polling booths – Papermate Flairs, chosen for their quick-drying ink – and absentee voters can use any ball-point pen. Pytleski cautioned especially not to use Sharpies, which can bleed through a double-sided ballot and confuse the results, or glitter pens, which can muck up the machinery.

One advantage the new machines have over the old system is greater ease of use for people with disabilities who need help marking the ballot. In Americans with Disabilities Act mode, it even fills in any not-quite-perfect marks so the ballot can’t be distinguished from others, thus preserving the privacy of the voter’s choices.

With foreign interference in U.S. elections a campaign issue for nearly four years now, election security is a hot topic.

“We are really being watched on what we do. I don’t mean to sound critical, but Iowa didn’t help,” Pytleski said, referring to problems tabulating the results of the Iowa Democratic caucuses last week. “My fear is, I don’t want confidence to go down based on what somebody else does. Look at our work.”

The city, village and town clerks serving across Oconto County do great work, she said.

“I mean, they put their heart and soul into making Election Day a good day for everyone,” Pytleski said.

Hackers from Russia, Ukraine or anywhere can’t manipulate the results because the system is not connected to the internet in any way. The free-standing machines tabulate the precinct’s results, which are then hand-delivered to the clerk’s office by the next day. The results are called, emailed or faxed to Pytleski, who takes care to call them “unofficial results” until confirmed when they actually arrive at her office.

“The way Russia could impact Kim Pytleski is by undermining people’s confidence in my ability to do my job,” she said.

Although voter confidence might be shaken, the results are the results, Pytleski said. The ImageCast Evolution system contains “multi-factor authentication” practices to ensure there is no tampering.

In the event of a recount, the county is small enough that the paper ballots can be efficiently recounted by hand in a public meeting.

They can be tedious, but Pytleski admits she actually likes recounts, which usually reveal that the votes were tallied accurately on Election Night.

“I like them because I get to show everybody, ‘Look, we did a good job,’” she said.

All polling sites will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday for the spring primary election. Wisconsin’s partisan presidential primary is scheduled to coincide with the spring general election April 7.