The Bucks County Board of Elections last week announced a series of public training sessions to help voters familiarize themselves with the county’s new voting machines.
The schedule consists of 12 trainings at locations throughout the county, beginning in late February and ending in late April. The sessions are designed to allow voters to see in person how the county’s new Clear Ballot voting machines operate in advance of the 2020 elections.
The Clear Ballot system, which uses hand-marked paper ballots, was selected by the elections board on Nov. 27, and approved by the Board of County Commissioners on Dec. 4.
Clear Ballot is a voter-verified paper ballot system that uses ballots lacking bar codes or QR codes. Voters complete paper ballots by hand and feed them into a scanner, which drops the ballot into a ballot bag for transportation to the Board of Elections office at the end of Election Day.
The Clear Ballot scanners also scan an image of the completed ballots and tabulate results from each precinct for efficient election night reporting. All tabulated and scanned images are kept in a secured database and do not touch the internet.
The Clear Ballot system also provides a ballot-marking device for each polling place for voters who require ADA provisions. The ballot-marking device prints a ballot identical to those provided to non-ADA voters at the polling place before it is fed into a scanner.
Below is the public schedule. To sign up to work at the polls, call Kelly Gale, assistant director of the Board of Elections, at 215-348-6887.
• Feb. 24, 5 to 8 p.m., Bucks County Technical High School, 610 Wistar Road, Fairless Hills
• Feb. 25, 1 to 4 p.m., Quakertown Branch, Bucks County Free Library, 402 W. Mill St., Quakertown
• Feb. 26, 5 to 8 p.m., Bensalem Municipal Building, 2400 Byberry Road, Bensalem
• March 3, 5 to 8 p.m., Sellersville Fire Department Hall, 2 N. Main St., Sellersville
• March 6, 5 to 8 p.m., Bucks County Administration Building, 55 E. Court St., Room R110, Doylestown
• March 10, 1 to 4 p.m., Bensalem Municipal Building, 2400 Byberry Road, Bensalem
• March 17, 5 to 8 p.m., Bucks County Community College, Newtown Campus, 275 Swamp Road, Newtown
• March 23, 5 to 8 p.m., Bucks County Administration Building, 55 E. Court St., Doylestown
• March 30, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Ben Wilson Senior Activity Center, 580 Delmont Ave., Warminster
• April 7, 1 to 4 p.m., Juniper Village at Bucks County, 3200 Bensalem Blvd., Bensalem
• April 16, 5 to 8 p.m., Bucks County Community College, Lower Bucks Campus, 1304 Veterans Highway, Bristol
• April 21, 5 to 8 p.m., Bucks County Community College, Perkasie Campus, One Hillendale Road, Perkasie ••
