The Monroe County Board of Elections has settled a dispute over whether it should go with cardboard or metal foxes for people to drop off their absentee ballots in the upcoming election.
The board will go a third way, choosing metal and plastic drop-off box that offers voters more security for their ballots, but is cheaper than the all-metal boxes. That satisfies both the Republican Commissioner Lisa Nicolay's concerns over security...and Democratic Commissioner Jackie Ortiz's concerns over the high cost of the metal drop boxes.
The compromise choice both locks, and costs about $79,000 less than the all-metal boxes. The cost to the county will be just short of $50,000. For that, the county gets drop boxes for all early voting sites and for all polling sites on election day. Voters can securely drop off their mail-in ballots as an alternative to the U.S. Postal Service.