Panel may block cash for voting machines

By JIM PROVANCE
BLADE COLUMBUS BUREAU

COLUMBUS - The legislative panel controlling the state’s purse strings is expected next week to block release of federal funds to buy electronic voting machines.

The move would increase chances most Ohio counties still will use punch-card ballots like those called into question in Florida in 2000 during this year’s November presidential election.

The war of words between lawmakers and Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell escalated yesterday as a joint legislative committee met for the first time to review security questions surrounding electronic voting.

Sen. Jeff Jacobson (R., Vandalia), a review committee member, said language appropriating $5.8 million in state matching funds to the secretary of state was slipped unnoticed by most lawmakers into the state’s capital budget for bricks-and-mortar projects in 2002.

"There was an assumption on the behalf of the secretary of state that the legislators’ proper role was to rubber stamp the process so that they could make all the decisions," Mr. Jacobson said. "We would not be in this situation today if we had had this discussion two years ago."

Mr. Blackwell has exercised contracts with three vendors for the purchase of the machines for 88 counties, most of them touch-screen machines manufactured by Akron-based Diebold Elections Systems. He plans to ask the State Controlling Board on Monday to release $127 million in funds appropriated for Ohio under the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002.

"Big decisions, big plans, big designs were always shared with the legislature," Mr. Blackwell said. "I found it particularly interesting that a member of the Senate Finance Committee would, in fact, say he had not a clue that this issue was before this committee. Now whose fault is that?"

Mr. Blackwell had hoped to have new touch-screen and optical-scan machines in the 77 counties still using punch-card ballots by August special elections or the Nov. 2 general election. The rest of the state would be converted in 2005.

That timetable is now in serious doubt.

The joint committee is looking at security issues and also at whether the state should mandate that the machines include a verifiable paper audit trail for recount purposes.