ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The days of coloring in a bubble for the person you want to vote for, are over.  Starting with village elections in March, people who vote in Monroe County will do so on new electronic machines.   

The Express XL machines were unveiled by the Monroe County Board of Elections on Monday.  They are manufactured by Elections Systems & Software.  The county ordered 1,000 of the new machines which cost about $12,000 each.

Voters will pick-up a blank white card when checking in that has a barcode on the top of it which identifies your voting district. You’ll then proceed to a machine and pull the privacy curtain. You put the card with the barcode on it into the machine.  Once it’s processed, your ballot will pop up on the screen.  You’ll choose your preferred language and use the touch screen to make your selections. 

There is also the ability to write-in candidates.  Once you believe you’re finished, you will choose to print your ballot.  The ballot with your selections will then come up in a see-through window on the side of the machine for you to confirm.  If it matches the sections you made on the screen and you are finished, you touch “cast my ballot” and the process is complete.  If you make a mistake or want to make a change, you can return to the screen to do so before finalizing your ballot. 

“Having gone and watched some of these elections live in action, you’ll see that the average voter gets on one of these and is done voting within 80 seconds,” explains democratic elections commissioner Jackie Ortiz who added that the county spoke with every approved voting-machine contractor in New York State before landing on the Express XL machines. 

As for the safety measures in place on the machines, “first and foremost, they are not connected to the internet as NYS election law prohibits that,” says republican commissioner Peter Elder. 

The machines aren’t even able to connect to Wi-Fi, the internet or Bluetooth according to Ingrid Giordano, the New York State Sales Manager for Election Systems and Software. 

“As for the paper ballot security, there is a locked ballot box in each machine just like you had before and that paper ballot is stored in that locked box so, the inspectors will not be handling the paper ballots, after the polls are closed it will simply be transported back to the elections office in a locked container,” she explains. 

The paper ballots will be available to be cross-referenced with two separate electronic devices that tabulate results in each machine as well, “the media devices, the memory of the machine, those are all encrypted and proprietary to the machine so, no one could replace them or access them and use them on a different computer,” Giordano says. 

While each machine requires power, they also have 6-hour battery back-ups in the event of an outage and the county has extra batteries it can deliver in the event of an emergency.  As far as the space the machines take up at polling sites, “we are going to be re-evaluating every polling site to ensure they have the square footage requirements but it is important to remember that the privacy area that people use now, it’s not going to be there because the privacy area is literally part of the machines now,” Elder says.  

The county will roll out the new machines for the first time during village elections in March and the primary election in June.  Before that, it will have a number of training sessions with elections inspectors and supervisors. 

The general public is also invited to practice with the machines at the Rochester Home and Garden Show in March or anytime at the Board of Elections, which is located inside the Monroe County Office Building.