Blackwell blocks use of new voting machines
Saturday, July 17, 2004
Julie Carr Smyth
Plain Dealer Bureau

Columbus- Diebold Inc., the embattled Ohio-based voting-machine maker, was blocked Friday from putting its touch-screen machines in Ohio counties in November.

The decision by Secretary of State Ken Blackwell affects Lorain, Trumbull and Hardin counties. All were planning to use the machines to replace outdated punch-card or lever machines this year under the federal Help America Vote Act.

The three counties now plan to stick with their current voting equipment for the fall presidential election.

All other Ohio counties that had prepared to roll out new equipment this year put their plans on hold in the wake of new state legislation that will require voter-verified paper receipts by 2006.

Blackwell said that the machines were retested to see if security flaws identified in December had been resolved but that preliminary results showed problems remain. Blackwell did not provide details of the lingering risks.

"As I made clear last year, I will not place these voting devices before Ohio's voters until identified risks are corrected," Blackwell said in a statement.

Mark Radke, marketing director for Diebold Election Systems, said the company had not seen findings Friday of Blackwell's latest review, conducted by Detroit-based CompuWare Corp.

He noted the company has taken extra efforts to meet every new security and certification requirement. "We remain committed to meeting the high standards that the secretary of state has established," Radke said in a statement.

Imperfections in the design and computer programming of Diebold's electronic devices have dogged the company for months, stirring the ire of voting activists around the country.

Local activist Doreen Lazarus said Blackwell's decision to block use of the machines this fall is "an excellent start."

"It's reassuring," said Lazarus, a member of the Cleveland-based Electronic Voting Monitoring Group. "It is always a good thing for Ohio, or any state or county in the country, when machines that have not passed security tests or machines that have uncertified software are kept out of elections."

But elections officials who had hoped to use the Diebold machines were disappointed.

"We so much wanted to go ahead with the touch screen," said Carol Cornell, deputy elections director in Hardin County. "We believe in them, we just believe they're an accurate way of voting."

Trumbull County elections Director Norma Williams said that after extensive exposure to all available machines, her staff found Diebold's to be the most user-friendly.

Both women said security concerns with the machines don't worry them.

"So much of what we hear is caused by operator error," Cornell said. "It usually boils down to human errors, and no one has seemed to bring anything to prove otherwise."