Jackson County Election Commissioner Danny Glaskox told the Mississippi Free Press that voters across the county expressed concerns about long poll lines, which was largely due to some precincts lacking enough voting machines to accommodate the large voter turnout.
“We just didn’t have enough equipment out there,” Glaskox said. “We’re gonna look at buying more equipment because nobody expected this big a turnout for a midterm election.”
Before the last election, Glaskox said, each precinct had one touchscreen. He said he purchased an additional 150 touchscreen ExpressVote machines ahead of this election so there were “enough ExpressVotes to send out multiple.”
“We had some extra ExpressVotes, but some of the commissioners didn’t think we needed to send them out,” Glaskox said. “I don’t make the decisions for them, I just make the decisions in my precinct.”
Glaskox said there were two or three ballot scanner machines left and around 25 extra ExpressVotes machines left that weren’t set up ahead of this year’s midterm elections. With voter turnout higher than expected, Glaskox said election officials did not anticipate they would need these machines. He said setting up a new machine requires a careful testing process before it can be cleared to use in an election.
“We don’t just go take a machine and take it out there. That machine has to be tested. It has to be cleared from the last election,” he said. “Then, we have to put the new data on it and test it with a test deck, so it’s not something you can just snap your fingers and do.”
