New Voting Equipment In Dodge County A Success

(Juneau) Voters in Dodge County saw new equipment at the polls for Tuesday’s primary election. The new hardware and software was purchased through Election Systems and Software of Omaha, Nebraska. The technology allows for all municipalities to report at the same time and no longer relies on telephone lines in reporting results, making for more efficient returns on election night. Dodge County Clerk Karen Gibson says everything went “fabulous” last night. She says the results were coming in like hotcakes, especially compared to the old way of sending the results over a phone line that was always giving municipal clerks a busy signal.  The city of Beaver Dam is able to wirelessly send results to Juneau right from the polling place instead of bringing the information to the municipal building and sending by phone modem. The results were finalized around 9pm last night. Most of the districts had their results to Juneau by 8:30pm. Gibson says a couple precincts had new clerks and a small sliver of the city of Hartford had new houses annexed into Dodge County along with a handful of new voters. The voting system allows for the programming and the receipt of unofficial election returns at the county-level as well as new tabulators and modems at the municipal level. The tabulators notify voters if their ballot has been counted or not. If there is an error, the voter is notified and given the opportunity to recast the ballot or request up to three new ballots. If the submission is successful, voters will receive a message reading: ‘Thank you for voting. Your ballot has been counted.’ Two-thirds of the funding for the tabulators and the election equipment was provided by Dodge County with the local municipalities contributing the balance.