KINGSTON – Ulster County government is about to approve $16,000 to pay its five percent share of new voting machines for disabled persons.

The new machines will include a ballot marking device for handicapped voters, said County Legislator Gary Bischoff, chairman of the Laws and Rules Committee.

“These machines also have the ability to act as a tabulator or paper ballot optical scanner and in a small quantity of voting places, they are going to actually be used as they would in an election in 2009, to count the votes,” he said. “But, we are not fully trusting the machines; we are going to do 100 percent hand count also.”

The county has already appropriated spending $64,000 as its five percent portion of the bulk of the new voting machines that are required under the Help America Vote Act.