Ohio turns to optical scan voting

U.S. aid is enough to reduce voter-to-machine ratio; models meet standards

By Dennis J. Willard and Doug Oplinger

Akron Beacon Journal 14 January 2005

COLUMBUS - More machines at Ohio's precincts so voters will not have to wait two, three or four hours to cast a ballot.

Punch-card ballots criticized for hanging chads and lost votes gone from every county.

Counties, already reeling from tight budgets, receiving federal dollars to buy newoptical-scan machines that count votes at the precinct and create a paper trail to follow in case questions are raised after Election Day about winners and losers.

Could it be that Ohio is about to move from the Stone Age of voting and into the 21st century?

Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell says it is so, although the Republican chief elections officer has his critics.

Blackwell issued a directive Wednesday to all 88 county election boards: Convert to precinct-counted optical-scan machines no later than May 2006, and by November if possible. Time, money and technology drove the decision to go with optical-scan machines instead of electronic touch screens, Blackwell said.

He said 900,000 new voters turned out in Ohio in November and in some cases waited for hours. In response, he said, counties must buy more optical-scan machines and reduce their voter-to-machine ratios.

He said the $106 million in federal funding that Ohio has received will pay for enough new optical-scan machines to hit a 200-voter-per-device ratio. Installing touch screens with a paper audit trail would cost nearly $190 million.

And, Blackwell said, theoptical-scan machines that count each vote at the precinct already meet the state's voting-machine criteria, while touch-screen machines do not.

``There's not a county that can't do it. There's no hardship out there,'' Blackwell said.

John Schmidt, deputy director of the Summit County Board of Elections, said Blackwell's announcement came as a surprise.

A year earlier, when counties were under orders to a vendor and begin conversion to electronic voting machines, Summit board members balked, citing concern about voting-machine security, Schmidt said.

Blackwell told Summit to work with Diebold Inc. of Green and begin the conversion. However, other states later raised security questions, and purchases in Ohio were postponed.

``At the end of the day, we'll do whatever we're told,'' Schmidt said. ``We're very confident'' in scanners, he said.

Schmidt said the November goal may be too aggressive: In addition to buying the equipment, officials will have to redesign polling booths. The countertop will need to be enlarged to accommodate the candidate-and-issues book and a ballot the size of a business letter.

``I would imagine some unfunded mandates placed on the county,'' he said. ``We were going to have that with electronic voting.''

Gary Coberly, Geauga County Elections Board chairman, said optical scanning ``is a very good system. It satisfies the wants of some people who want a verifiable audit trail.''

Geauga, one of 13 Ohio counties with some form of optical scanning, has used it for more than 10 years. In close races that required recounts, everyone has been satisfied that the system worked well, he said.

Geauga collects the ballots at the polling place and sends them to county headquarters for counting. The county will need new equipment to count ballots at each polling place, he said.

Scanning at the precincts ``actually might help us to be more efficient,'' he said.

Asked which he would prefer if he had an option touch screens or scanners Coberly favored scanners.

State Sen. Tom Roberts, D-Dayton, criticized Blackwell for not involving the county election boards in the decision and for opting for the scanners prematurely. Roberts said he would prefer touch-screen machines. He said their technological problems are expected to be resolved in time to convert for the May 2006 primary.

He said optical-scan machines will be more expensive because the paper trail for auditing will cost more than touch screens.

Blackwell disagreed, saying a paper trail would be necessary with touch screens, too. Paper with optical-scan ballots is ``not an additional cost,'' Blackwell said.