Butler County’s old voting systems won’t be able to be used by local high schools.
Butler County Commissioner Kevin Boozel suggested the idea earlier this year after the county purchased a new, paper-based, voting system. He thought Butler County school districts might be interested in the county’s 500 electronic systems to use for things like student elections or in civics classes.
That won’t be able to happen because of regulations, but Boozel said Wednesday he hopes voting systems can still make their ways into the hands of students.
“We would like to go into the schools with our current paper-based system and let them use it for an actual election,” he said, explaining it will take some time to phase the project in.
The benefits of doing something like this, according to Boozel, include getting students comfortable with the voting process and also possibly recruiting poll workers.
A company is expected to come collect the old machines on Friday, wipe their data, and then properly dispose of them.
Last year, the state mandated that all counties switch to a voting system that had a verifiable paper record that could be referenced should there be a discrepancy.