Although the Centre County commissioners have elected to return to paper voting ballots by switching from computerized touch-screen voting machines to optical scanning machines, the Clearfield County commissioners said they are happy with the touch-screen machines.

Clearfield County uses touch-screen voting machines similar to those Centre County used and purchases them from the same company, Elections Systems & Software of Omaha, Neb. Clearfield County began using the touch-screen voting machines last year.

When asked by The Progress after yesterday's meeting, Commissioners John Sobel and Joan Robinson McMillen said they have been happy with the performance of the touch-screen voting machines and that they are accurate and more efficient than the optical scanning equipment the county used prior to acquiring the touch-screen machines using grant funds provided through the Help America Vote Act.

Solicitor Kim Kesner said Clearfield County formerly used an optical scanning system similar to the one Centre County will now be using.

Commissioner Mark McCracken was present at yesterday's commissioners meeting but had to leave immediately afterward to attend another meeting and was not present during the interview. However, in the past Mr. McCracken has been a strong proponent of the touch-screen voting machines and was one of the two commissioners who originally voted to purchase them. Former Commissioner Rex Read also voted in favor of purchasing the touch-screen voting machines, while former commissioner Michael Lytle voted against them because they didn't have paper ballots for verification.

The touch-screen system has voters cast their ballots by touching a computer screen, which then records their vote electronically. However, this system has no physical ballot; the vote is only recorded electronically.

Optical scanning equipment uses paper ballots and has voters fill in circles on a piece of paper to cast ballots, and then an optical scanner counts the ballots.

Mr. Kesner said although no system is perfect, the optical scanning equipment system has several problems that the touch-screen system doesn't have.

According to Mr. Kesner, who said he had firsthand experience with optical scanning equipment going back to when he served on the Clarion County recount board, optical scanning equipment sometimes gives different results for the same ballots each time they are put through the machine. Even when ballots are hand-counted, the count wouldn't always come up the same.

The problem often was that people did not clearly mark their ballots, making it difficult for the machines or for people to determine for whom the vote was cast.

And in Clearfield County, with the optical scanning equipment, election officials would usually have to work late into the night and into the early morning hours following election day counting ballots because of the time-consuming nature of the optical scanning machines and because the equipment would often jam and sometimes "eat" ballots, Mr. Kesner said.

With the touch-screen voting machines, the county completed tallying votes by 11 p.m. on Election Day, and would have been done even earlier if it weren't for the counting of absentee ballots.

Mrs. McMillen also said the optical scanning equipment would fail more often the more it was used due to wear and tear on the machines and age.

Since switching to the touch-screen system, she said the county has very few problems on Election Day.

Mr. Kesner said if the county wanted to return to using optical scanning equipment, it would have to purchase the equipment with its own funds.

And, if the county switched to paper ballots and optical scanning equipment, the county would still be required to have American With Disabilities Act-compliant voting machines at every precinct, which in all likelihood means there would have to be at least one touch-screen voting machine at every precinct.

According to Mr. Kesner, the way state law is written, virtually the only system that meets ADA requirements is the touch-screen voting system. If the county were to use another system, it would likely have to fight the state to prove that the system was ADA-compliant.

However, Mr. Kesner did not criticize the Centre County Commissioners for their decision to switch to optical scanning equipment. He likened it to purchasing a new car - not everybody is going to like or want the same car, and just because someone chose to purchase a different system than Clearfield County, everybody has different preferences and it doesn't mean it was a bad or wrong decision.

In other business:

• the Clearfield County Commissioners thanked all those who assisted in the opposition to the Camp Hope Landfill application in Boggs Township.
  The state Department of Environmental Protection recently rejected PA Waste LLC of Feasterville's landfill application permit, saying it was incomplete.
  Mrs. McMillen specifically thanked the residents of Boggs Township and state Rep. Camille "Bud" George, D-74 of Houtzdale, for their efforts in opposing the landfill and thanked DEP for carefully reviewing the application.
  "We are very pleased with the outcome," Mrs. McMillen said.
  Mr. McCracken mirrored Mrs. McMillen's sentiments but said he was disappointed in some of the comments made to the media by Robert Rovner, president of PA Waste LLC. However, Mr. McCracken said he took it as a compliment when Mr. Rovner said the commissioners were responsible for DEP's rejection of the landfill application.
  Despite the victory, the commissioners said they still have work to do with the other pending application for a landfill in Chest Township.
  According to Mrs. McMillen, Eagle Environmental II LLP of Sloatsburg, N.Y., has released the proposed truck route to the landfill site, which will cross several municipalities and towns in Clearfield County and decrease the quality of life of those residents along the route.
  According to a map released by the commissioners, the proposed truck route from the north goes from Interstate 80 to the state Route 879 bypass through Clearfield Borough and Lawrence Township, and continues on through the boroughs of Curwensville and Grampian to U.S. Route 219. It follows U.S. 219 through Mahaffey Borough to SR 36 and passes through Newberg Borough to Chest Township and onto SR 3014 to the landfill.
  The southern route will go from SR 36 through Westover Borough to SR 3014 to the landfill.
  According to Mrs. McMillen, 165 trucks a day are planned to go to the landfill, which works out to be about one truck every five minutes.