Mathews County Registrar Carla Faulkner said that the state is requiring all localities to use paper ballots with optical scan voting machines rather than touchscreen machines, and 2017 is the anticipated date for Mathews County to switch over.

The current touchscreen machines are going on 12 years old, and Faulkner said she had requested $50,000 from the county to replace them, hoping the replacements would be optical scan machines.

“It seems like the public likes the idea,” she said. “They want to see a paper trail. If there’s a recount, you can prove it—‘Yes. We see it.’”

The paper ballots will be very simple, much like what people are used to seeing on the touchscreen machines, said Faulkner. To vote, a person will take a ballot to a private voting station, fill in a bubble next to the selected candidate’s name, then go to the optical scan machine and insert the ballot, where it will be counted. If there’s a problem wit...