Obsolete voting machines from Allen County are loaded onto a truck for transporting to Muncie, Indiana, and eventually to the Benin republic in West Africa

Around 600 voting machines from Allen County have begun a journey to West Africa, where they will be used to assist the Benin republic in implementing a new voting system.

The machines were loaded onto trucks Monday morning for transporting to Muncie, Indiana, home base for the Center of Integrity, Empowerment and Fairness.  CIEF is collecting about 2,000 machines from across Indiana and will eventually send them on to West Africa.

The MicroVote voting machines have been in storage at the County Election Board barn since 2006.  They fail to meet Americans with Disabilities Act guidelines because they do not have audio capabilities for use by sight-impaired voters. 

County Elections Director Beth Dlug said it would have cost around $6,000 to have the machines recycled and that efforts to sell them were unsuccessful, so the decision was made to donate them to CIEF.  The county is paying the $450 cost to ship the machines.

According to a CIEF news release, modernizing the voting system from using paper ballots to the MicroVote Machines will enforce the model of successful democratization in West Africa.   Besides Allen County's donation, CIEF has collected 500 voting machines from different Indiana counties such as Bartholomew, DeKalb, Marion, and Morgan, and expects the delivery of another 1,000 machines from Lake County.