Touch-screen voting machines may be available to Warren County at a lower cost than improving the existing system, but won’t be an improvement if they keep people from voting, a member of the Warren County Board of Supervisors said Thursday.

“A lot of people 50 years old and older will not deal with these machines very well,” said District 5 Supervisor Richard George. Larry Prentiss, the newly seated District 2 supervisor, agreed.

Warren County now uses optical scanners. Voters use a black pen to complete arrows on paper ballots that are slid into machines purchased at county expense. The City of Vicksburg uses the same county-owned machines in municipal voting.

Under the Help America Vote Act, passed after ballot confusion in the 2000 presidential election, especially in Florida, Congress has made available grants to states wishing to change systems.

The latest machines feature video displays where voters simply touch the screen and then affirm their selections.

David Rankin, Warren County’s geographical information system specialist and the person in charge of the county’s computer systems, and Purchasing Agent Tonga Vinson made a presentation to supervisors on the Diebold machines the state is buying.

Rankin said Warren County would be provided with 91 of the Diebold units and needs 138.

Using those numbers, Rankin said the initial cost to Warren County would be $167,841 to buy 47 Diebold units not covered in the grant. That’s about $120,000 less than the $283,000 Rankin said would be needed to upgrade the scanners and to buy 24 disability-compliant machines, a requirement of the federal act.

George said changing to the new machines would cut into the percentage of eligible voters who actually vote. Also, George said, the new machines may add to the pressure to vote quickly.

People “should be under no pressure in voting,” he said.

The advantages of keeping the present voting system include the fact that the voters are familiar with how it works; it alerts a voter to a mistake and allows corrections to be made easily; it leaves a paper trail in the event an election is contested or a recount is needed and power failures don’t bring an election to a halt.

Also, George said, in the 13 years the county has used the scanner system there has been no election contested because of the machines.

The board will have until Aug. 15 to officially decide whether it wants to take the state up on its offer or if it wants to keep the present system.

In other business before the board Thursday, representatives of the Issaquena Warren Land Co. presented their side of the Paw Paw Road dispute. Representatives of the Paw Paw Island Land Co. met with the board last week asking that the county have Issaquena Warren remove two gates on the road and cease construction of a building in the right of way of Paw Paw Road. Their contention was that the road is listed as extending 0.6 mile from Mississippi 465 on the map of county-owned roads adopted when the county switched from the beat system to the unit system in 1988.

Mark Herbert, a Jackson attorney representing Issaquena Warren, said his clients bought its land from Anderson-Tully Co. in 2002 and at that time, received a deed that included that part of Paw Paw Road from a gate at the toe of the Main Line Mississippi River Levee to Paw Paw Chute.

At the time of the purchase, he said Issaquena Warren notified the owners of Paw Paw Island Land Co. they intended to move the road and allow those hunting club members access to their property over the new road.

“We even built them a parking area,” he said.

In the intervening years, Paw Paw Island Land Co. filed a lawsuit in Warren County Chancery Court against Issaquena Warren, Herbert said.

He then produced a copy of a Warren County Road System Register his clients put in evidence in the lawsuit that showed Paw Paw Road as 0.13 mile long and not 0.6 mile.

“I urge you before you get involved in a private dispute that you research this carefully,” Herbert said.

He also suggested the county wait until Chancellor Vicki Barnes concludes the trial of the lawsuit and files her decision.