SIDNEY — Officials from VOTEC will be at the Shelby County Board of Elections next week to unpack, spot check and set up the new E Pollbooks which will be used by voters in future elections.

According to Dawn Billing, the officials will also be taking data back to get everything ready for the local board. She said she is also preparing a list of questions for the officials.

Billing said she is also going to set up a visit to the Champaign County Board of Elections to observe how they have their system set up. They use the same system as Shelby County will be using.

“Once they set up a schedule for next week, they will unpack, spot check and make sure everything is there,” said Chris Gibbs, chairman. “We want to make sure we got what the county paid for.”

Gibbs asked Billing to reach out to a county holding a special election so members of the board can visit on Election Day.

Training sessions with poll workers will be established before the next election.

Both Billing and Gibbs said the period of time between when absentee ballots are accepted and when polls are opened will need finalized. Absentee ballots are entered until 2 p.m. on the Monday before Election Day. Polls open on Election Day at 6:30 a.m. During the period between 2 p.m. Monday and 6:30 a.m. Tuesday ballots could be received and the process to enter them into the system at the polling places needs to be established.

Billing said she’d like to hold a “cleaning day” to go through the silver suitcases which hold the voting booths. Some of them need repairs and others are beyond repair.

She also said the board will start receiving a bill for the IT services used. The county has a contract with the city of Sidney for the IT services. Right now, the bill is paid by the Shelby County Engineer’s Office for the entire county. In the near future, the bills will be broken up according to which department used the services. Billing said the Board of Election’s bill will be approximately $1,900 for the three PCs and servers at the office.

New Deputy Director Donnie Chupp talked about his first week on the job and the new director training he attended in Columbus. Both he and Billing worked Saturday to send in a report to the state on how many absentee ballots were requested by military or overseas residents. None were received.

The board’s next meeting will be Monday, April 17, at 7:30 a.m.