Portage might voting suit

Board of elections will end its fight with secretary of state over machines if he agrees to certain details

By Lisa A. Abraham    Akron Beacon Journal   20 April 2005

The Portage County Board of Elections voted Tuesday to its lawsuit against Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell if he agrees to some specifics about the purchase of electronic voting machines.

The board sued Blackwell over his January directive ordering Ohio's 88 counties to chose one of two vendors supplying optical scan voting machines.

Optical scanners read votes marked in pencil on paper ballots. At the time, they were the only ones certified in Ohio that could produce a paper audit trial a requirement of both state and federal laws.

Attorney General Jim Petro, however, subsequently issued an opinion that Blackwell's directive was outside his authority.

Portage County officials complained that Blackwell had eliminated the choice of electronic touch-screen machines from the federal program that will pay for the new equipment. Blackwell also had imposed a deadline to move forward, which the Portage officials considered unfair.

Portage County Common Pleas Judge Laurie Pittman issued an order telling Blackwell he could not enforce his deadline for picking a new voting system. A Franklin County judge issued a similar ruling in a case filed by that county's board of elections.

A similar case was filed by the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.

Last week, however, Blackwell announced that not only had Diebold's new touch-screen machine with a verified paper trial been certified but that he had negotiated a deal with the Green-based company for the purchase of those machines for $2,700 each.

At its meeting on Tuesday, the Portage elections board voted unanimously to its lawsuit as long as certain conditions are met, Director Lois Enlow said.

Denise Smith, chief assistant prosecutor for Portage County, said the board is willing to its suit if Blackwell can agree to give the county assurances that it will get enough money from the federal Help America Vote Act to pay for the machines. That is, if there is an increase in the negotiated $2,700 price that there will be federal money to cover the price increase. The board also wants assurances that the machines will be brand new not rebuilt or reconditioned models.

Blackwell's spokesman Carlo LoParo has been critical of Portage and other counties that sued over the machines and the lack of choice.

He maintained that the process established by Blackwell's office was intended all along to give choice but that there were no electronic machines with the required voter verified paper audit trail that were certified in Ohio.

The Diebold machine was not available last year.

``The fact of the matter is, it was a difficult negotiation with election vendors. And counties that took the secretary of state to court did not help the process, but in fact impeded the process,'' he said.

``Those wayward counties that challenged the secretary of state made it much more difficult. Vendors are less likely to negotiate a good price if they believe a court will just give them their asking price,'' he said.

LoParo said Portage or any of the other counties can ``continue their legal actions and lose in court,'' or move forward and provide electronic voting to their residents.

Under the formula used by Blackwell's office, counties will need to have one touch-screen machine for every 175 voters. In Portage County, that comes out to 589 machines, plus one optical scan machine to be used for absentee voting at the board office, Enlow said.

At $2,700 each, outfitting the county with touch screen machines would cost nearly $1.6 million, Enlow said.

Smith said the good part for the county is that the new negotiated price for the touch screens is cheaper than the previous cost of optical scan machines.

``The good side of it is we do have electronic voting available and no capital cost to the county now,'' Smith said.