TICKETS RELOCATION DELAYED Digital dismissal system Merritt encourages bypass Whiteville High School’s for traffic violations businesses to move downtown Legion Stadium field house going online. when widening begins. project running late. uuSEE 4A uuSEE 2A uuSEE 3A The News Reporter Published since 1890 every Monday and Thursday for the County of Columbus and her people. WWW.NRCOLUMBUS.COM Monday, July 25, 2016 75 CENTS SLICE TWICE ... SLICE THRICE ... SLICE NICE WESTERN PRONG PRECINCT MOVE IN MONDAY MEETING Elections board to consider new voting machines By Allen Turner
[email protected] The Columbus County Board of Elections will meet to- day at 5 p.m. to consider purchasing new voting equipment to be used throughout the county. A new polling site for the Western Prong precinct is also under consideration. The board is expected to approve the purchase of 42 new voting machines at $245,000. The new machines would be in use by the November General Election. Michelle Mrozkowski of New Bern-based vendor Print- Elect demonstrated the new voting machines Friday for Board of Elections members and the public. The DS200 precinct scanner and tabulator would re- place older machines in use in Columbus County since 2006. When a voter casts his or her ballot, the new machine will be able to detect whether the voter has undervoted (by not voting in all races or by not voting for as many candidates as possible in a race) or overvoted (by voting for too many candidates in a race). The voter will be alerted by the machine and given the choice of either casting the ballot as marked or returning Staff photo by ALLEN TURNER A machete-weilding volunteer makes short work of preparing watermelon samples during Saturday’s N.C.