Election Officials Say New Voting Machines Needed

Reported by: AP
5/19/2005

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) More counties may seek a three-day extension to next week's deadline to choose a supplier of new voting machines to be in place by January, the head of a county elections officials association said Wednesday.

Four counties Mahoning, Allen, Hamilton and Sandusky were granted extensions from the May 24 deadline to May 27 after joining a lawsuit filed in Franklin County Common Pleas Court by the voting-machine maker Election Systems & Software against Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell.

Four other counties Auglaize, Brown, Logan and Ottawa were considering joining the suit, said Keith Cunningham, president of the Ohio Association of Elections Officials and director of the Allen County Board of Elections.

Omaha, Neb.-based ES&S wants more time to get its electronic touch-screen voting machines certified by federal and state officials. Blackwell says ES&S had the same chance as other vendors.

Diebold Election Systems, based in North Canton, was the only vendor whose touch-screens had qualified by the May 13 deadline, Blackwell's office said.

Judge Dale Crawford granted Mahoning County's request for an extension and Blackwell broadened it to include the four counties in the lawsuit.

Blackwell would not necessarily grant the extension to any other counties joining the suit, spokesman Carlo LoParo said. Crawford said Wednesday he would rule in the case next week.

Both ES&S and Diebold offer optical-scan machines that have passed state and federal testing, but as of Wednesday, only one of 23 counties that picked a vendor had opted for ES&S optical scanners, which electronically read marks voters make on paper.

The other 22 had ed Diebold touch-screen machines. Blackwell wants all counties ready with their new systems by January in case an unexpected opening occurs in the U.S. House or Senate, LoParo said.

Systems must be in place in time for the first federal election of 2006, under the federal program providing the $115 million that will pay for new voting machines.

Cunningham said not all counties may be ready by January and that Blackwell should just focus on the counties where a congressional election might take place.

Counties previously expected the deadline to be May, when the statewide primary takes place.

Michael Vu, elections director in Cuyahoga County, said he expects to have his new machines in place by this November's election and will have no problem meeting Tuesday's deadline for ing a vendor.

The county will choose Diebold machines pending negotiations with the vendor, he said.

Auglaize County wants to stick with ES&S but must acquire touch-screen machines to serve disabled voters, elections director Linda Householder said.

"We are currently happy with what they do for us," Householder said. "We feel like we're being forced to choose a vendor we aren't familiar with and we are not comfortable with."

Cunningham also said since he plans to stick with ES&S optical scan machines, he doesn't know if the equipment will be compatible with the Diebold touch-screen machines he must place in each polling place to accommodate voters with disabilities.

Both systems use computer cards to record votes at the precinct level.

Both cards are electronically tabulated at the board of elections but by different systems, LoParo said.

The cost of both systems includes the devices that tabulate the votes, he said.

Many county elections officials have said they would prefer using the equipment before the May 2006 primary because of heavier turnout expected then.

The requirement to stop using punch-card machines grew out of problems in the presidential election in Florida in 2000.