Mercer County election officials are vowing to avoid a repeat of last year's election day bungle where problems with the ballot counting process delayed some local races from being called and took workers days to count the votes in full a senior political correspondent David Cruz reports the county will roll out fancy new voting machines with verifiable paper trails in every voting district ahead of election day we weren't able to count our votes on Election Day and that should never happen again with the unease about our election process it was exactly not what the Mercer County or any other County's election system needed in 2022 after what the county clerk thought would be a cost-saving change to ballots caused an election day chain reaction of machine coding errors voters were forced to use paper ballots that had to be manually counted at the Board of Elections it took two days we got a call at like 6:00 in the a little after 6:00 a.m. on Election Day last year saying that the ballots were not scanning and I asked you know the Board of Elections person that called me where was it and they said it's everywhere because they started to get phone calls and we were like oh this is not good in the months after that near Fiasco including several heated hearings of the County Commission the Board of Elections rebooted so to speak the system with new machines that include increased privacy paperback backups and touchscreens County officials say will prevent a repeat of November 22 Walker Worthy is the county superintendent of Elections he walked us through the new process at the warehouse where the machines are being readed for election day 2023 what's the difference uh this time around what what's going to be different well like the county clerk said we we have new voting machines and um we put a lot of time into these machines the voters said they wanted a um they wanted more privacy which the machines give them more privacy we have curtains that go around the machine before we didn't have curtains and people felt that people were watching to see how they voted the new system limits the number of people who actually touch the ballots meaning rather than a pole worker handing you the ballot you'll get a card that contains the information on a chip you will go to the machine insert it and your ballot type will come up the pole worker who's standing the machine will get that card and they will run it through and your ballot will pop up once the ballot pops up you'll make your choice when you're done with your choice you'll push print the ballot will come out you will look at it say Yep this is who I wanted to vote for you put it into the machine tabulator and it tabulates but the new machines are just part of several steps recommended by former State Attorney General Peter Harvey who was brought in by the Attorney General's office to investigate after Mammoth County reported incorrect results last year among these are more training for pole workers and creating a system whereby the Attorney General's office isn't the one representing election officials when you go to court to resolve a voting issue if you go to vote on Election Day and you hit an issue you have the right have the right to go see an election day judge absolutely but on the other side is going to be the county election officials who are saying for whatever reason that maybe you shouldn't um you you don't have the right to vote there represented by the um by the Attorney General in New Jersey this does create a conflict of interest because they also can't then um explore or navigate around the county election officials that they themselves represent in Mercer officials say they're already training pole workers at least creating a fix for the potential conflict of interest is a job for lawmakers who you will get a chance to elect beginning with early voting that starts this weekend the first first big test for the new equipment and for voters I'm David Cruz NJ Spotlight News