Lake joins suit
By: John Arthur Hutchison  News-Herald  05/20/2005

Elections board asks for machines to be used in Willowick special election

During an emergency meeting Thursday, the Lake County Elections Board decided to join in a lawsuit its members hope will give them more time to a voting machine vendor.
Lake County joins voting machine vendor Election Systems & Software, of Omaha, Neb., which initially filed the lawsuit in Franklin County Common Pleas Court in Columbus.
Mahoning and Franklin counties have since joined the litigation.
The board also asked Canton-based Diebold Inc. to bring its machines to Lake County to conduct the July 12 special election for Willowick City Council Ward 3.
If Diebold agrees, it would mark the first time this type of voting equipment, with a verified paper audit trail, would be used in a U.S. election, Elections Board Director Janet F. Clair said.
Six precincts, with three polling places, will take part in that election, she said.
Mark G. Radke, Diebold's director of voting industry business development and global marketing, said the company is considering the request.
A decision will be made shortly, he said.
"We're going to evaluate that very closely to see if that is feasible," Radke said.
He understands Lake County's decision to join in the lawsuit.
But he said if Lake County s Diebold, the county will get the company's "undivided attention," especially with company headquarters only an hour away.
Diebold is the only vendor that has passed strict analysis to be certified by the state, Radke
said.
Under a directive from Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, Tuesday is the deadline for counties to make a vendor decision.
Lake County Elections Board officials said if they didn't join the litigation, they most likely would not have been granted a deadline extension.
Today was Franklin County Common Pleas Court's deadline for interested parties to join the lawsuit.
So the Lake County board called the emergency meeting. Board Member Dale F. Fellows was absent.
Patricia A. Nocero, assistant Lake County prosecutor, said a legal brief to join the lawsuit was faxed to the court Thursday.
The decision to join the lawsuit and the request of Diebold to conduct the July 12 special election came two days after the elections board viewed Diebold's demonstration of its AccuVote-TSX System machine at the board office in Painesville.
On Thursday, Clair said too many questions remained before she could make a vendor recommendation to the elections board.
A switch to an optical-scan system still remains an option to consider, she said.
In a memorandum to board members, Clair expressed several concerns, including a cost comparison that is unavailable from vendors.
"Obviously, there were some unanswered questions from the Diebold demonstration," said John F. Platz, Elections Board chairman.
"We thought if we joined the lawsuit, we could get until Sept. 15 to make a decision."
In the memorandum, Clair stated she has not seen how a vendor would perform under real conditions, including:
* Election set-up, voting, closing of the polls
* Result tabulation
* Tallying the verified paper audit trail results
* Conducing a recount
* Seeing integration of the bar code and election software, and testing their functionality.