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WARREN -- There's a new way to vote in Trumbull County.
And to make sure voters know what to expect when they go to the polls on May 7 or vote in-person absentee before at the Trumbull County Board of Elections, a series of community meetings are scheduled to make the introductions to the new voting system.
"The open houses are for people to come ask questions, vote sample ballots, things of that nature," said elections board Deputy Director Ron Massullo.
Gone are the 14-year-old touchscreen voting units in favor of pen and paper for voters who now are required to blacken ovals on their ballots and feed them into an optical scanner to record the votes.
The elections board purchased 150 of the scanners and 80 machines for visually impaired voters in February from Elections Systems and Software in Omaha, Neb. They cost $1.4 million.
Because just 105 of Trumbull County's 158 precincts will be open for the May election, just about that many scanners will be rolled out to the public. In voting locations with more than one precinct, there will be more than one scanner.
The units for visually impaired voters have audio, a keypad and headphones.
"The whole new system is rolling out," Massullo said. "We have totally mothballed the old system and we'll be looking to properly dispose of it in the summer."
New e-poll books also will be at the meetings.
The meetings are scheduled for 4 to 6 p.m. Tuesday at Warren SCOPE Center, 375 N. Park Ave., Warren;
5:30 to 7 p.m. April 1 at Niles SCOPE Center, 14. E. State St., Niles; 5:30 to 7 p.m. April 2 at New Jerusalem Fellowship Church, 2555 Palmyra Road SW, Warren; 5:30 to 7 p.m. April 3 at Newton Falls administration building, 19 N. Canal St., Newton Falls; and 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. April 6 at Christ Episcopal Church Hall, 2627 Atlantic St. NE, Warren.
Any voter is welcome to attend any of the meetings.
The new system will work like this -- voters will sign in at their precinct at an e-poll book and receive a slip of paper to exchange with a poll worker for a ballot. After getting the ballot, the voter will use a privacy booth to vote and then insert the ballot into the scanner, which will record the vote on a flash drive. The paper ballot will remain inside the locked machine.
In instances where there is an overvote, when more than the maximum votes are cast in one race, the machine is programmed to detect it and let the voter know. The voter is then given the option to cast the ballot anyway, which in this case, will void the overvote and record the rest of the ballot, or void the ballot entirely and get a new ballot from a poll worker.
rselak@tribtoday.com