A faction of Washington County residents has been calling on county commissioners to make changes to the way the county conducts voting. In what originally began as a campaign to audit the 2020 general election to search out fraud, has now transformed into a call for voting machines in the county to be replaced by paper ballots. Register of Wills, James Roman (pictured) and county resident Ashley Duff presented commissioners with 2157 signatures on petitions to try and get a ballot question on the November 2022 general election ballot asking for a vote on the use of paper ballots. Roman tried to get the issue on the agenda for the regular commissioners meeting on Thursday but was not successful. Efforts to try and have the question arbitrarily placed on the ballot have not been successful. In a prepared statement Roman pointed to a section of the voting machine law that he felt allowed commissioners to accept either of the proposals. Commissioner Chairwoman Diana Irey-Vaughn pointed to the section of the same law that pertains to Washington County. It states that commissioners are unable to arbitrarily place a question on a ballot removing voting machines from use. A method for petitioning is available if strict guidelines are followed. One of those guidelines is that signatures from voters equaling 10% of the previous general election be accurately presented to commissioners 60 days before the election. The signatures collected did not follow necessary format and fell more than 3000 short of the necessary 5193 needed to make application. It is unclear where the effort to change to paper ballots lies at this time.