The San Luis Obispo county elections office installed a new piece of equipment to speed up the signature verification process.
The Agilis machine will be implemented for the first time this coming primary election on June 2nd. Ballots are fed into the machine, and a camera photographs the signature on the envelope, comparing it to the voter’s signature on file. Ballots are sorted by how much the signatures line up, and ones with major issues are sorted separately.
Voter office workers will also be verifying signatures. The new system costs $500,000, funded through grant money, and is said to be about five times faster than old equipment.
