Counties in lawsuit now at 32

Associated Press      27 May 2005

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Twelve more counties have joined a voting-machine maker's lawsuit to extend the state's deadline for qualifying touch-screen systems, bringing the total to 32, the manufacturer said Friday.

Joining Election Systems & Software's lawsuit extended the participating counties' deadline for picking a voting system to at least Wednesday.

ES&S and Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell's office have been in negotiations since the company filed the lawsuit May 2. It asserts that the process by which Diebold Election Systems won certification was unfair. Blackwell disagrees, saying the same rules applied to all manufacturers. Diebold has the only touch-screen machine to meet certification standards.

Judge Dale Crawford of Franklin County Common Pleas Court has scheduled a hearing for next week on ES&S's request to keep Blackwell from enforcing the May 13 deadline for manufacturers to receive certification by the state Board of Voting Machine Examiners and from federal elections officials.

The counties that have joined the suit since Tuesday are Clermont, Clinton, Franklin, Meigs, Monroe, Noble, Ottawa, Ross, Seneca, Tuscarawas, Williams and Wyandotte, ES&S said in a news release.

Counties already in the suit were Allen, Auglaize, Brown, Champaign, Delaware, Fayette, Hamilton, Knox, Lake, Logan, Madison, Mahoning, Pickaway, Preble, Putnam, Sandusky, Shelby, Summit, Union and Washington.

ES&S says it will meet certifications by the end of August at the latest. Blackwell wants systems to be in place for November's municipal elections and says that new systems must be on line by Jan. 1 in case of a special congressional election.

So far, 48 counties have chosen Diebold Election System's electronic touch screen systems, equipped with a state-required paper record so voters can verify their choices. Twelve counties picked ES&S optical scan, electronic machines that read marks that voters make on paper, while two chose Diebold optical scan.

The federal Help America Vote Act requires that new systems be in place for the first federal elections of 2006. Congress passed the act in response to the 2000 election debacle in Florida. The federal government is paying $115 million for the upgrade in Ohio's 88 counties.