The State of Georgia has finalized an agreement with Diebold Election Systems to purchase 6,000 of the company's ExpressPoll electronic poll books that will automate and streamline the check-in process at voting locations throughout the state.

The poll book units will be used in conjunction with Diebold's touch-screen voting technology. The value of the agreement, which also includes general service support initiatives, is approximately $15 million.

The ExpressPoll-4000 will provide poll workers with immediate access to voter information at each voting precinct. Voters are quickly verified by poll workers who simply touch a few characters of the person's first or last name and/or date of birth on the unit's touch-screen interface.

The functionality of the ExpressPoll-4000 enables poll workers to immediately identify if a voter is not in the correct voting location, and can quickly provide the address of the voter's designated precinct. A detailed street map may also be presented, providing visual instructions to the location of the voter's designated precinct. The ability to rapidly verify whether a person is registered will reduce the number of provisional ballots issued in precincts.

The electronic poll books can also eliminate the need for costly printed voter registration books because the names of all voters in a jurisdiction are duplicated from the official voter registration roll for the respective election and stored within the memory of the unit.

The ExpressPoll-4000 will also be used in Georgia precincts to create voter access cards used by each voter to activate the Diebold touch-screen voting stations. The system will identify the correct ballot style for each voter based on stored information from voter registration files.
KW