Be prepared: Voting might take awhile

[RawMaterials]

"It's the most complex election we've ever had in the history of Hamilton County," board Director John Williams said Thursday.

Williams spoke as he watched 4,000 voting machines being loaded onto 25 tractor-trailers to be delivered to 585 polling places.

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In an election involving a presidential vote, Hamilton County has to produce 740 different ballots because it rotates candidates' names to prevent the same name from always being at the top of the list.

In this election, there are so many candidates and issues, it has 2,600 different-looking ballots.

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Starting next year, a new $10 million optical-scan voting system will be in place.

The ballots are filled out and scanned into a machine to be counted.

Williams predicts that 43 percent of Hamilton County's 573,000 registered voters - or about 275,000 - will vote in the Nov. 8 election.

It will cost about $650,000 to hold the election in Hamilton County.



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