New electronic-voting machines unveiled to local government officials

Local voters will be seeing new voting machines at polling places this year.

New electronic-voting machines were unveiled to local government officials during a meeting Thursday afternoon.

The old machines have been replaced simply because the technology being used needed to be updated.

“We started those (the previous voting machines) in 2006,” Rich Vargo, the clerk for Riley County, said. “Their life cycle was projected to be eight years, so we got an extra four years out of them. They had gone beyond their life cycle. And of course with anything new (technology-wise), there’s newer security measures.”

Each machine costed a little over $3,000 with a total of over $1 million spent on the new technology.

(Read more: 1350 KMAN)