Approval of voting machine disputed
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Reginald Fields and Julie Carr Smyth
Cleveland Plain Dealer 

Columbus

A state regulatory board on Tuesday approved a new Diebold touch-screen voting machine for Ohio voters, although the device lacks all the state's requirements.

The AccuVote-TSX slid in under a state-imposed certification deadline set for Friday even as Diebold competitor Election Systems & Software continued to fight the time constraint in a courtroom across town. 
 

Secretary of State Ken Blackwell's top aide on the state's voting-machine conversion, Judy Grady, told ES&S lawyers during a deposition filed in the case that she set the divisive deadline to accommodate funding and deployment deadlines as well as her own vacation schedule.

She said that she called none of the state's three certified voting-machine vendors Diebold, ES&S and Hart Intercivic to see if they could meet the new edict.

Yet, she testified, she did consult with Norm Cummings, the out-of-town political consultant overseeing Blackwell's campaign for Ohio governor in 2006.

Grady whose six-page strategy memo on an earlier directive surfaced Monday said she consults Cummings "for image, for message, for clarity."

The first directive ordered that optical scanners be used statewide, except for disabled voters; the second, three months later, cleared touch screens made by Diebold to compete.

Grady recalled speaking to Cummings five to 10 times between the January and April directives including during the two to three days leading up to the latest decree.

Grady told lawyers she was unaware of what Cummings does for Blackwell, a Cincinnati Republican, or who pays him.

Competitors have criticized Blackwell's April order as delivering a virtual monopoly to Diebold on the state's $106 million switch to new voting machines.

Executives of the company, based in Green in Summit County, have historically been generous to Republicans, including President Bush.

The Ohio Board of Voting Machine Examiners hinged its approval of Diebold's touch-screen machine - which includes the mandated paper receipts for voters - on the fact it has passed all the pivotal state and federal tests. 
 The panel did so even though the system still did not have an "NASED number," a certification from the National Association of State Election Directors.

Board Chair Gerry Lewis said the fact that the machine has already passed two industry laboratory tests and that a national review board is conferring on the matter makes federal certification a formality.

The board also chose to overlook the fact that the paper receipts the TSX produces for voters did not display the full ballot, as legislative rules required.

Diebold marketing director Mark Radke assured the board that voter receipts could contain as much ballot language as county elections officials wanted.

Jill Friedman, a spokeswoman for ES&S, questioned the examiners' decision on the machine.

"The real decision today was the decision on the part of the board to basically change the rules," she said. "The message it sends is that if you don't like the rules of the game in Ohio, just change them."