Blackwell sends Ohio in wrong direction
Editorial    Canton Repository   Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Kenneth Blackwell wants to be governor, but as long as he is Ohio?s secretary of state, his job is to go to bat for Ohio voters. Instead, he has sold them out.

Blackwell has ordered county boards of elections to buy optical-scan voting machines instead of electronic voting machines. This decision sends Ohio back to the horse-and-buggy days of paper ballots and pencils while the rest of the country goes in the opposite direction. But optical-scan technology is cheaper, and that is important because Ohio has limited funds but many more voters now than it had a year ago, an aide to Blackwell explained.

Yes, because of the frenzied voter registration drives that occurred before the November presidential election, Ohio does have many more voters. Isn?t this good news? Blackwell has always said that increasing voter turnout is one of his goals. Now, faced with that reality, he treats it as a problem and settles for outdated technology as a quick-fix solution. Instead, he should lobby members of Congress and state legislators to help Ohio counties buy the best voting technology possible.

Blackwell?s decision is a problem in other ways, too.

? He made it without consulting county elections officials, who have less than a month to decide which of two optical-scan systems to buy.

? Six counties already use electronic voting machines. They plan to fight for the right to continue using them.

? Elections directors say they will have to pay people to haul the bulky optical-scan equipment to and from polling places.

? Elections officials will face higher printing costs.

? They also will have to assume the expense and risks of training poll workers to use two types of voting systems, since federal law requires handicapped-accessible polling places to have at least one electronic voting machine.

? Finally, as the Toledo Blade reports, Lucas County officials learned the hard way last November that ?ballots dampened or dripped on by voters who?ve been out in the rain? will shut down the counting of votes by optical-scan machines.

Blackwell is willing to settle for ?good enough.? He is going 180 degrees in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, he is taking Ohio voters with him.