Regulations concerning the Help America Vote Act are set to shake things up for local municipalities, changing the way they have conducted elections for years.

In effort to alleviate any confusion or misunderstanding, the Cayuga County Board of Elections is inviting all town supervisors and village mayors to attend a special HAVA meeting 6:30 p.m. May 16 at the Cayuga County Office Building.

"We have inherited all this responsibility, not because we want to but because we're been forced to, so we have to be very careful as to how we go about it," Legislator Paul Dudley, R-Cato, said at a Government Operations Committee meeting earlier this week.

Dudley suggested the idea to meet with other municipal officials. In the past, towns and villages owned and stored the machines. They also were in charge of hiring election inspectors and custodians.

Because of federal and state regulations, however, all of those duties will now fall to the county board of elections, said Republican Election Commissioner Cherl Heary.

The county may subsequently bill back the municipalities for machine transportation, inspector and custodian costs, with the exact charges to be determined by the Legislature, Heary said. Municipalities now budget for inspectors and custodians, but any transportation costs would be a new expense, she added.

While the law puts the county in charge, Heary wants to ensure that local officials don't think the board of elections is trying to take away their power.

"I think the concern is that they still want to make sure they maintain the integrity of the elections in their towns," Heary said, noting that the county welcomes recommendations from clerks as to whom their inspectors should be, "and I think that really isn't going to change."

For more on this story, read Friday's edition of The Citizen.