Santa Cruz County poll workers train for Election Day

UPDATED: 10:06 PM 6/2/16

The June primary election is less than a week away and Thursday the Santa Cruz County elections office is gearing up. The office is training it’s staff on the electronic voting machines before the big day. When voters get to the polls, they’ll have two options: vote by paper or electronically. Whichever method voters choose, election officials need to make sure their staff is ready to handle any hiccups along the way.

“On Election Day, these papers will have hopefully the correct numbers per your assigned equipment for that precinct,” said electronic voting instructor Elizabeth Ungerecht.

Ungerecht said, “So we try to run through as many different scenarios as we can.”

Training included the proper way to insert a ballot into the machine.

“That’s hopefully the sound you’ll hear all day,” said Ungerecht. “If it doesn’t, you could have some of these cases where the machine beeps and the ballot gets spit out.”

The trainees learned what to do if the machines don’t accept a voter’s paper ballot.

“Never touch the ballot. Don’t look at the ballot,” said Ungerecht.

Voter privacy is critical during an election, so instead of looking at someone’s ballot to figure out the problem, a print out receipt will list what’s wrong.

Both paper ballots and electronic voting are offered at all precincts, but officials say Santa Cruz County has the highest percentage of voters using touch screen statewide.

English and Spanish are the only two languages offered with the electronic option

“It’s very easy to use. It gets activated by the poll worker on Election Day and then you just push the screen indicating your choices. It’s easy to determine if your choice has been chosen because it’s a green checkmark,” said assistant county clerk, Tricia Webber.

More than 146,000 people are registered to vote in Santa Cruz County. The county will have 700 poll workers on hand for next Tuesday’s primary.

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With less than a week until the June 7 primary election, Santa Cruz County poll workers are learning to operate and troubleshoot the county’s electronic voting machines. The idea is to keep things running smoothly on Election Day.

Tonight at 5 p.m. KION’s Brandon Castillo will show us how poll workers are preparing for a busy election.