Mower County commissioners made a poor decision by not accepting grant money to purchase optical scan vote-counting machines.

If the grant money was accepted, the county would have had to match the $95,675 grant allocated for 43 machines.

The county would have also been responsible to purchase a maintenance agreement from the vendor.

Let's think about this for a minute.

Last we checked, we entered the 21st century a few years ago. It's pretty apparent that paper ballots will eventually go to the wayside. Austin realized that a few years ago when they purchased these machines.

So what's the benefit?

More votes are counted because the machines "grade" the votes for accuracy.

If there's a discrepancy, the voter is alerted to it before leaving the booth, giving them a chance to correct the mistake instead of having the ballot thrown out.

Also, candidates and the public know much sooner who the winners are, and county workers and election judges don't have to tarry until the wee hours of the morning to truck the ballots from throughout the county to Austin.

Although time is an important factor, accuracy is even a more pressing reason in having these electronic counters instead of paper ballots. Do county commissioners recall what happened in Florida just a few short years ago?

Hello?

That alone should debunk the commissioners' reasoning that the machines shouldn’t be purchased because they'll only be used during elections.

That may be a valid point. But if a person is elected in a razor-thin race and the outcome should have been different, that potentially could be a four-year mistake.

And who's to say this grant money will be available when commissioners wise up and finally decide to purchase these machines?

Again, the recent decision to continue with paper ballots is, at best, perplexing. Maybe commissioners will have a more open mind next time this opportunity rolls around.

We hope they take action before a disputed election forces them to purchase these machines at full cost.