While voters for yesterday’s elections may not have agreed on certain candidates, levies or bills, they did seem to agree on their new method of casting ballots.

AccuVote-TSX, the new touch screen voting computer system, debuted in Wood County for the first time this election, much to the delight of many voters.

Forty-one counties in Ohio made the switch to the touch screen system in hopes of eliminating confusion at the ballot box.

While skeptics believed touch-screen voting would provide more misunderstandings, poll workers and voters around Bowling Green seemed very pleased with the new system.

“I think they are really easy to use. They’re going to be really good to relieve all the paper work,” said voter Ardy Gonyer, a sophomore at the University. “With the old polling system you had to insert a card and make sure you were punching the right hole, and of course you don’t want to leave any hanging chads, but this one is a lot easier to navigate through.”

Prior to the election, the Wood County Election Board took several precautionary steps in order to eliminate any possible problems.

These steps included requiring polling workers to attend mandatory three hour class, distributing fliers and brochures teaching voters how to use the machine and also hiring roving voting poll technicians.

These measures, coupled with a step by step tutorial on the computer itself, seemed to make this new system a success.

Because college students use computers on a nearly daily basis, poll workers at the University never foresaw any problems with the new system.

“Students here have had a very easy time with them. They’ve all been very positive about them,” said poll worker Barbara Applebaum. “At the University we didn’t anticipate that the voters would have a problem with the machines.”

This was an issue in the other precincts where many of the voters would not be familiar with doing this type of voting.

While students didn’t seem to have any trouble using a computer to cast their votes, there have been more absentee ballots in the county than past years, and the county has also experienced a shortage of poll workers because they didn’t feel comfortable working with the machines.

The new technology didn’t deter Tammy Barfell, who proclaimed himself as computer illiterate, from voting. Barfell, a Bowling Green resident, cast her ballot with no confusions or problems.

“I like it a lot. It’s very user friendly and easy to understand … the directions are very easy to follow,” Barfell said. “The other one was a little outdated, a little antiquated. We needed something updated, and I think there will be a lot fewer questions with this.”

Both the county and the state also hope this new process with leave fewer questions at the ballot box, but time will tell how effective it really is.

“This is the new system,” Applebaum said. “I don’t think it’s a bad system at all, but we just have to get used to it.”

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