The San Diego Registrar of Voters will be using new technology during the upcoming primary election on Tuesday, March 3.
The county just purchased high-tech devices that will help cut down on wait times in line and will make the overall counting process more efficient.
One of the big changes is new scanning machines. Rather than having a person manually scan in every ballot card, machines will do it.
"In our last system, it took one person 45 minutes to run 500 cards. In our new system, one of these high-speed scanners reads 10,000 cards per hour," said Registrar of Voters Michael Vu.
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The county also purchased a smaller version of the same machine that can count 4,000 ballots in an hour.
However, staff will still be taking a closer look at any ballots with irregularities.
"Voters have a tendency to mark it [the ballot] in a variety of ways," said Vu. "There are cases when they circle around the bubble. There are also situations where voters put a hesitation mark where they plan to vote for this person, but then they change their mind."
The county also purchased two new on-demand ballot printers, which should help cut down on wait times at the Registrar of Voters office.
Rather than having staff sort through several cabinets for a pre-printed ballot for a voter, they can just print one directly from one of the machines. It's something Vu says will come in very handy on Super Tuesday.
"In this election we have 12,516 different variations of the ballot," said Vu.
The only new piece of technology that voters could actually use themselves is a new ballot-marking device. Instead of marking a paper ballot, you use a touch screen. Once you're finished, your ballot is printed with all of your selections. You can review it before placing it in the ballot box.
The cost of all of this new equipment is about $16 million. Vu says the county will be reimbursed by the state of California and the federal government.