The Dutchess County Board of Elections will debut our new optical scan voting machines in a special PILOT PROGRAM in the 5th Ward in the City of Poughkeepsie at two polling locations – Warring Elementary School and the Salvation Army. All voters will cast their ballot on new paper ballots that will be scanned into the voting machine. There will be NO lever machines in these two poll sites only optical scan voting machines. The State Board asked every county to conduct a pilot program as a prelude to the full roll out of new voting machines next year. The pilot program will provide us with an opportunity to test out several types of voting booths, introduce voter education programs and evaluate our procedures. We are excited about this opportunity. – Fran Knapp, Democratic Board of Elections Commissioner
