FERRIDAY, La. &045; The vote certification only took a few minutes, but workers waited around for a half-hour just in case anyone had any questions.

The results of Saturday’s tax election, in which a sales tax increase of 1.5 cents in Concordia Parish was approved 827-767, was confirmed without a single discrepancy.

The certification process is simple. On Tuesday, workers checked that each of the 23 machines used at 19 precincts across the parish Saturday has the same vote total recorded by election commissioners on site.

&8220;We just have to make sure nobody made a mistake,&8221; parish Clerk of Courts Clyde Ray Webber said.

A public counter measures the number of votes cast in an election and a protective counter records every vote that has ever been cast on the machine.

But the process may be coming to an end soon.

The plastic and aluminum behemoths that are the parish’s voting machines will be put out to pasture soon as new computerized touch-screen machines are brought in across the state.

Secretary of State Al Ater told Webber the new machines are coming soon, Webber said.

These old machines may be huge and unwieldy, but Webber doesn’t want to give them up. They’ve been here for all of the 40 years he’s worked in Concordia Parish.

&8220;I wish we would keep these,&8221; Webber said. &8220;They’re a lot of trouble and they’re heavy, but they work and people have confidence in them. Going from those to touch screen, that’s like moving someone from an adding machine to a computer. There’s going to be some problems.&8221;