Lake County seeks trial run for Diebold voting machines
Friday, May 20, 2005
Maggi Martin
Cleveland Plain Dealer

Painesville- The Lake County Elections Board wants Diebold Inc., one of the state-approved voting-machine vendors, to conduct Willowick's special council election in July to test the company's machines for the first time in Ohio.

Elections Director Jan Clair said the county also has joined in a lawsuit with Election Systems & Software, one of Diebold's competitors, against Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell to get more time to replace the county's current equipment.

Clair said that the county's Sequoia Voting System is not on the state's list of approved vendors but has performed well and that the county still owes $800,000 on the touch-screen machines bought in 1999. Those machines could be fitted to provide a paper trail, as required by law, but not by the May 24 deadline imposed by Blackwell.  

Clair said Lake County wants to see how Diebold's machines perform before it decides which system to buy.

"We want to make an informed decision on voting machines, but we want to know the system will work properly," Clair said.

Mark Radke, Diebold's director of marketing, said the company's machines are used in Georgia and Maryland. He said the system is the only one in Ohio that passed a security analysis certifying that voting results cannot be tampered with.

Radke said the company is reviewing the Willowick election request.

"We need to evaluate and coordinate efforts to train poll workers before that can happen," he said.

On Tuesday, the Ohio House approved legislation that requires county election boards to verify electronic vote totals with paper records.