By SUZANNE MARINO
Staff Writer

NORTHFIELD – The voting machines to be used in Atlantic County Feb. 5 for the “Super Tuesday” presidential primary were lined up like soldiers awaiting inspection Monday morning, Jan. 28.

County Superintendent of Elections John Mooney invited members of the media and the county Democratic and Republican Party chairmen to come and inspect the voting machines before they start their journey to polling places around the county.

The machines for the island communities are housed in Atlantic City, while the balance of the machines are kept at a voting machine warehouse in Northfield. Mooney said it takes about a week to deliver them to their destinations throughout the county.

In the November 2007 election a computer glitch kept results in several county districts in doubt until the paper tape could be read, and it took the county days to make the results official.

Mooney said he doesn’t anticipate any problems with the upcoming primary.

Vito Rubino, the chief mechanic for the voting machines, said that the new electronic machines had some software problems, but they should be fine for the primary.

“We’ve worked out the bugs,” he said.

Mooney said the county has a team of mechanics who will be stationed out in the field on the day of the election to correct any problems that come up.

The election marks the first time the state of New Jersey has held a presidential primary election in February. It is a presidential primary only. There will still be a primary election held in June for all of the other candidates running for office in November.

“It took a tremendous amount of work on the machines to get ready for this primary election in a very short turn-around period from the November election to February,” Mooney said.

He noted that voter registration is at an all-time high with nearly 160,000 registered voters in Atlantic County.

“The largest numbers of those who have registered are the unaffiliated voters. They were formerly called independents, but that has now been changed to unaffiliated,” he explained.

“A new law will now permit the unaffiliated voter to cast their ballot. What they can do is declare their party at the polls to be either a Democrat or Republican. They will be able to change that back to unaffiliated at a later time if they wish to,” Mooney said. “That way they will have a chance to cast their vote in the primary.”

The ballots loaded in the machines contain the names of some candidates who dropped out of the race for the White House too late for the ballot to be changed, such as Fred Thompson, Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich and Bill Richardson.

There is no provision for write-in votes in the presidential primary; voters must choose from the candidates on the ballot.