Electronic voting machine to get approval for disabled vote

Associated Press    07 April 2005

COLUMBUS, Ohio - An electronic voting machine will be certified for use by disabled voters once the paperwork of its federal approval arrives, a spokesman for the state's elections chief said Tuesday.

However, the machine won't be available for use by all voters in next year's election, primarily because of the cost of buying 40,000 of them, said Carlo LoParo, spokesman for Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell.

The Diebold-made machine to be certified by the Ohio Board of Voting Machine Examiners includes a device that produces a paper record that can be read by voters, as required by Ohio law. It also has an audio feature so those who cannot read a ballot can vote, making it compliant with the Help America Vote Act. All machines must be meet HAVA standards for the first federal election of 2006.

The cost of refitting Ohio's polling places will be about $100 million if optical-scan machines that electronically read paper ballots are used, LoParo said. That also includes the cost of placing one electronic touch-pad voting machine for the disabled in each polling place, he said.

The cost of placing 40,000 electronic machines would be about $140 million, based on information in the voting changes the Legislature approved last year. The state has about $106 million in federal money available for upgrading the machines in all 88 counties.