System ain't broke - why must we fix it?

Editorial    News-Herald
05/01/2005
 There may be no greater example of injustice in government than the situation Lake County finds itself in with regard to its voting machines.
The machines work perfectly well. The voters like them. They produce results that are 100 percent reliable. And they provide fast reports.
The machines are in full compliance with federal voting act standards. But they do not provide a paper printout, which is a requirement of state law, not federal law.
The legislature, for some reason, seems enamored of the paper trail feature. Unfortunately, Lake County elections officials are convinced the legislature will not make an exception for Lake County and let it continue to hold elections as it has since 2000.
Secretary of State Ken Blackwell has ruled that Lake County's Sequoia voting machines are not in compliance with state law. He has, for whatever reason, approved the use of Diebold voting machines statewide.
What this means is that Lake County's investment of $3 million in Sequoia voting machines - of which $800,000 is still owed - is money wasted.
There is no logical reasoning in this entire process, including Blackwell forcing Diebold machines on Ohio voters.
Lake County elections officials were ahead of the curve in 1999 when they studied state-of-the-art voting machines nationwide. Convinced that Sequoia machines were the best, most foolproof, on the market, they purchased that company's equipment.
They have been used in every election since then. The results have been amazing. Anyone who has voted in Lake County since 2000 is well aware how easy the machines are to use.
The voter simply pushes a button that points a green arrow at the name of the candidate he wishes to vote for.
The voter can easily change his mind simply by switching the arrow to an alternate candidate.
When the voter is satisfied he has chosen all the candidates he wishes to vote for, he activates the machine, the votes are registered and the next voter steps into the booth.
When the ridiculous voting foul-ups were taking place in Florida in the 2000 presidential election, with many voters being confused about punching holes in cards and examiners holding cards up to the light to determine if there were any "hanging chads," voters in Lake County were quietly amused.
They were well aware that it couldn't happen here.
But now elections officials here are resigned to the fact that they have little choice but to comply with Blackwell's directive.
That will mean replacing the county's 500 voting machines with paper-trail Diebold machines and buying another 400 machines to meet the standard set by Blackwell.
The outlay will be many millions of dollars, which, we are told, will be paid in federal funds.
Election Board Member John F. Platz says the prospect "defies rational thinking."
"We want our own machines, they work perfectly and the public embraced them," he said.
County Prosecutor Charles E. Coulson is continuing research to determine if the Sequoia machines can be retained by retrofitting them with the paper-trail feature, but he said that would also cost millions of dollars, it would not be paid by federal funds and the state would not offer any help.
Remember, the paper-trail feature came out of Columbus, not Washington. All it does is allow a voter to view a printout - under glass - of how he has voted. We have had zero problems conducting our elections in an efficient manner - without the paper trail.
"We want to make sure we explore every option that may be available to the county, since the equipment we currently have is doing an outstanding job," Coulson said.
A rational person would think that Blackwell would understand this and would give Lake County permission to continue using the thoroughly effective and efficient Sequoia machines.
But, as Platz points out, this is not a rational situation.
If Lake County gets stuck buying millions of dollars worth of new voting machines, regardless of who pays for them, the voters can place the blame exactly where it belongs - on the legislature for imposing the totally unnecessary paper-trail feature, and on Blackwell, for being the most obdurate public official in memory.