Fannin County Receives New Electronic Voting Machines

BLUE RIDGE, Ga. – The Fannin County Board of Registration and Elections recently received a shipment of 72 TSX machines.

These new electronic voting machines are an upgrade from the county’s previous machines that have been in use since 2002. The old TS machines will be evaluated by Kennesaw State University (KSU) for defects and need for repairs.

After KSU’s examination, the county can then offer the old machines to be used in other Georgia counties. Fannin County will not be able to sell these machines.

Wanda Collins explains, “These were State issued machines. We didn’t pay for them.”

Because of this state issuing at no charge, Fannin County must offer the old TS machines to counties within the state for no monetary exchange.

The county also had an immense task in the months of August and September with the removal of 1,861 registered voters from the County’s database. The vast majority of these removals came from a state notification of inactive voters.

The state notifies the Registration and Election Department when a registered voter has not participated in two General Elections. This inaction requires the voter to be deleted from the county and state databases, and they must register again to vote in further elections.

Fannin County keeps paper files of these voter deletions. With the constant addition of files, through deletion or registration, the Department of Registration and Elections was in need of more storage space.

The files require a specialized filing cabinet and the department had been looking to purchase these additional cabinets. The cost of new a single new cabinet could range from $1,100 to $1,600.

Vice Chairperson Mary Ann Conner, however, diligently searched and was able to locate one of these specialized filing cabinets for free.
The cabinet, which was donated from Paulding County, has been delivered to Fannin County and is already in use.

“We were able to save the county at least $1,100.00,” Conner stated.

 

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