By a 3 to 1 vote, the Northampton County Elections Commission endorsed a plan April 3 to stop using a $40,000-per-year private hauler of election machines. Instead, the county will rent trucks and do the job itself.

Elections officials were less than enthusiastic about the cost-saving measure.

Voting Registrar Dee Rumsey told the elections board that her office is already short staffed but that she was directed to find something to cut. Eliminating the private hauler was the only solution left.

"Anything's possible," voting machine operator David Zawick said.

Noting that each voting machine weighs 265 pounds, he explained that they are on rollers and can be moved fairly easily, although they are "delicate machines."

He added that Frick Transfer, which has done this transfer for over three decades, has "done a marvelous job."

Zawick explained that six county workers in the maintenance or custodial departments will be pulled from those jobs for three days to deliver the machines and another three days to get them back.

Each of the county's 149 polling districts has at least two machines.

Mary Diggs really wanted to know what the elections office staff thought about the proposal. That is something they were unwilling to do. As a result, Diggs supported the switch, joined by fellow Republicans Joshua Weinstein and Joan Rosenthal. Democrat George Treisner was the sole no vote.