Counties that could get electronic machines down to four

JOHN McCARTHY

Associated Press

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A federal mandate to replace punch-card voting machines with electronic devices has fizzled to the point that only four of Ohio's 88 counties will consider the idea for the Nov. 2 election, the secretary of state's office said Thursday.

The four counties - Hardin, Lorain, Mercer and Trumbull - must decide after the state completes a test of the machines, made by North Canton-based Diebold Inc. The tests should be completed by July 19, said Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell.

Meanwhile, lawyers representing the ACLU said Thursday the group would proceed this month with a lawsuit against the state that seeks to dump the punch-card machines.

The activist group said punch cards are mistake-prone and rob some people of their right to vote, especially in counties with large minority populations. The trial, in which Blackwell and the state are defendants, begins July 26 in U.S. District Court in Akron.

Initially, up to 31 counties were prepared to switch from punch cards and lever voting devices to electronic machines, but the number has dwindled to four. The rest of the state must complete the conversion to electronic machines by the 2006 primary election.

The original deadline set by the federal Help America Vote Act was the Nov. 2 election, but Blackwell received a waiver because of security questions.

Most of the 27 counties that backed off commitments to this year's election did so after the Legislature approved a requirement that the machines be fitted with devices that produce a voter-verifiable paper audit trail by 2006, LoParo said. Blackwell claimed the devices were not needed.

The testing completion target date leaves the four counties 106 days to train poll workers and educate voters about the new machines.

Hardin County has no choice. It already has removed the lever voting machines at its 38 polling places, said Anne Boston, the county board of elections director.

Boston said she has concerns about the publicity surrounding security of the Diebold machines but not about the machines themselves. "You just have to follow the directions," she said.

A security check conducted for Blackwell's office found 57 potential risks in the machines and software supplied by Diebold and two other state-approved vendors. The contractor conducting the tests described them as minor and correctible.

The 106-day period should be enough time for worker training and voter education, said Michael Sciortino, director of the Mahoning County Board of Elections. The board switched from optical scanning machines to electronic machines in 2001, beginning in the March primary in Youngstown and countywide in the general election.

"You need a good two-to-2 1/2-hour training session and a month later bring them back for another training session. There are challenging steps they have to go through," Sciortino said.

Boston will have machines at the Hardin County Fair on Sept. 7-12 so voters can get familiar with them. Sciortino said he used bingo halls, bowling alleys and other gathering spots for demonstrations.

"We were everywhere. We had to be. It's changing the culture and we wanted to people to feel comfortable," he said.

The ACLU suit seeks the removal of all punch-card ballots in Ohio in time for this year's presidential election. The ACLU argues that punch-card ballots are prevalent in counties with large black populations and the number of errors found on ballots turned in by blacks contain more errors than those turned in by whites.

Educational inequalities between the races could be the cause, said Dan Tokaji, a lawyer representing the ACLU in the case. "It's the technological version of a literacy test," he said.

Another ACLU lawyer, Richard Saphire, said the state has dragged its feet getting rid of punch cards.

"They've had almost four years since the last presidential election and done nothing and they've known about the problems longer than that," Saphire said.

Arthur Marziale, the state's senior deputy attorney general, said Ohio is in full compliance with state and federal law.

"We're going to have the battle of experts here. The ACLU has not demonstrated that one person in the state of Ohio, using punch-card ballots, was denied the right to vote," Marziale said.