Poll Pads are a new electronic voter check-in system that will be used during the Nov. 8 presidential election in 57 counties in Missouri.
KNOWiNK is a St. Louis company that developed a new electronic voter check-in system called Poll Pad in 2012. The company combined a registration software and an Apple iPad to create the product. It allows poll workers to search voters' information and make sure the correct ballot is being issued for each voter.
The system also informs the poll workers if the voters are in their correct polling station. David Greenwalt, Director of Development Solutions for KNOWiNK, said that this would improve the accuracy of the election.
“We had a county in Southern Indiana, which is St. Joseph County, they had an iPad that checked in a voter in 45 seconds, and a paper processes that can take up to three of four minutes” said Kevin Schott, KNOWiNK’s CFO, over the phone.
Another benefit of Poll Pads is that they offer an environmentally friendly option because they eliminate the use of paper registrations. The yearly maintenance of the system is also less expensive, said Steve Krosmeyer, Cole County Clerk.
“We were paying somewhere around $11,000 a year in maintenance contracts before and the new system is around $5,000 a year, so about half.”
The company goes beyond the state of Missouri, issuing Poll Pads in 17 different states and over 300 counties nationwide.