Ohio picks computer voting with paper trail Computer voting plus paper tab given OK
Diebold to benefit from state decision
Friday, April 15, 2005
Mark Naymik
Cleveland Plain Dealer

Voters across Ohio will soon face a computer screen when they step into a voting booth.

Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell on Thursday cleared the way for county election boards to replace punch-card and other paper-ballot voting systems with a touch-screen computer system that produces a paper receipt. 

Blackwell made his decision after a voting-machine maker, Diebold Election Systems, met the state's demand: create a touch-screen machine that produces a paper record and do so with a lower price tag.

The decision reverses Blackwell's ultimatum in January that election boards upgrade their systems only with optical scan voting devices, in which paper ballots are marked by pencil and read by a scanner.

Blackwell opposed the electronic systems, which record votes on a computer disc, after the state legislature passed a law requiring that such systems also produce a paper record of each vote.

The law, Blackwell said, created two problems for Ohio: No machine maker had a working device that could produce a paper receipt; and such a device would make the machines too expensive.

As a result, he nixed the state's plan to convert to electronic voting and ordered the counties to choose an optical-scan system.

The state law also left Diebold Election Systems - which had won the majority of the county contracts in Ohio to provide electronic voting machines - with a potentially unused inventory of machines.

So the company developed a device that produces a receipt and recently won federal approval for it. Diebold also agreed to lower the cost of each touch-screen machine, with the receipt device included, from $2,900 to $2,700.

The Help America Vote Act, passed by Congress after the 2000 election, sets aside about $130 million in federal money for Ohio to purchase new voting systems and educate the public on how to use them.

HAVA requires all states to upgrade punch-card voting systems by May 2006. Some Ohio counties, including Cuyahoga, hope to introduce the new electronic machines later this year.

Blackwell will still allow counties that want optical-scan machines to use them.

Blackwell boasted Thursday that his hardball negotiations would allow Ohio to upgrade its voting system for about $115 million.

"We demonstrated a willingness to move forward without electronic voting machines if vendors did not meet our budget and standards," Blackwell said in a statement.

"Our resolve has paid dividends. Ohio's taxpayers will now receive an extraordinary value."

Diebold earlier claimed that the cost of producing the receipt device could add an extra 20 percent to the price.

Diebold spokesman Mark Radke said Thursday that the paper-receipt device was less costly than expected and that the price of the machines - set in an earlier contract with Blackwell - left room to negotiate.

Blackwell's decision provides a potential windfall to Diebold because it is the only company with a receipt device now approved for use in Ohio.

Blackwell is allowing other voting machine makers, whose systems were approved for use before the receipt law was passed, to submit new bids.

They must first produce a device and win federal and state approval by May 14. Those companies would then be able to market their machines to Ohio's 88 counties.

Michelle Shafer, a spokesman for Hart InterCivic Inc., which makes an electronic machine approved earlier for use in the state, called the deadline arbitrary and accused Blackwell of "trying to guide Ohio's business to Diebold."

Shafer said Hart InterCivic was upset because Blackwell had little communication with other machine vendors while he negotiated with Diebold. She said Blackwell's news release about the Diebold decision was his only recent contact with Hart InterCivic.

Shafer said her company was in the final stages of developing a paper-receipt device and hopes to win approval soon.

Cuyahoga County's election board has long advocated electronic voting machines.

"Blackwell's latest decision reaffirms our feeling that this is the best system," said Michael Vu, director of the Cuyahoga board.

Vu and officials from other counties have argued that optical scan machines cost more in the long run because they require expensive, heavy-paper ballots. And the machines, they say, don't minimize voter errors as well as electronic machines do.

Earlier this year, Cuyahoga and Franklin counties went to court to try to block Blackwell's directive forcing them to buy optical scan machines.

Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro sided with the counties, arguing that Blackwell lacks authority to dictate what systems they purchase.

Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County board, on Thursday declared Blackwell's decision a "unprecendented victory" for his county.

State Sen. Teresa Fedor, a Toledo Democrat and one of a handful of state politicians who campaigned for receipt devices on electronic machines, said she's happy Blackwell is done "flip-flopping" on the issue and that voters have a "safe, verifiable voting system."