Fayette County Clerk Don Blevins is convinced Lexington area voters need new machines to cast ballots in future elections. He says some current machines are more than a decade old and failing.
Plus, a long ballot and, Blevins believes, many new voters extended voting times last week. And the county clerk says frivolous write-in ballots caused problems. “We had ten thousand write-in votes that had nothing to do with real write in candidates. So, this is where people are doing things like Mickey Mouse and John Calipari. Ten thousand of those. So, every time one of those people touched in, spell out the name, one character at a time, people are in line behind them while they do that,” said Blevins.
Still, Blevins says the current voting machinery is certainly part of the problem. He envisions going to a system which includes paper balloting that will speed up the process. Blevins admits filling out paper ballots comes with a cost. “Pre-printed ballots is much easier and faster for people. It gets them through the lines quicker. So, that’s the positive, but we have to predict how many to print and usually you have to print more than you need and so we waste money doing that,” noted Blevins.
Blevins says the cost of purchasing new machines would probably be between two and three million dollars. The county clerk doesn’t see a machine change before at least next November.
