Mecklenburg County

When Mecklenburg County was looking for a new voting system, Registrar Jason Corwin was excited about the possibility of being the first county in the Commonwealth of Virginia to adopt Clear Ballot. When the county tested ClearVote out for early voting in November, Corwin and his team were truly impressed by how many hours they saved at each step of the election process compared to their previous system.

Previously, each machine took 10-15 minutes to get ready in the morning before voters could cast a ballot, but ClearMark and ClearCast Go were ready for voters in just one minute. From there, the system was able to process ballots quickly and easily, with voters only needing to wait two seconds on average for their ballot to be scanned and processed. If ballot boxes needed to be emptied, the process of swapping out the ballot bins was cut from 45 minutes to just five with ClearVote. When poll workers were ready to close the polls at the end of the evening and print their reports, the county was able to get three copies of each results tape in just five minutes, compared to nearly 45 minutes in previous elections.

Corwin noted that the time savings were also valuable on the back-end as he worked to report results and ensure that all the ballots were counted. Corwin was particularly impressed with ClearVote's write-in tool, which allowed him to assign and report write-ins quickly and easily. By pre-programming reports that he needed and by avoiding the manual entry of 1500 data points that was previously required, Mecklenburg County was able to cut their reporting time down from two hours t o just 10 minutes, saving Corwin precious time on Election Night. Mecklenburg County will roll out the ClearVote system countywide in 2026, and Corwin is looking forward to continuing to explore all that the system has to offer.