Judge extends deadline for counties to chose voting machines

JOHN McCARTHY   Associated Press    02 June 2005

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A judge on Thursday gave Ohio's chief elections official and 32 counties that sued him over how Ohioans will vote next year more time to work out their differences.

Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Dale Crawford granted a temporary block of Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell's directive for all 88 counties to choose a new voting system by mid-May.

The new deadline is Sept. 15 for the 32 counties that joined the lawsuit filed last month by Election Systems & Software, an Omaha, Neb.-based voting machine maker. The deadline is temporary, pending settlement of the core issues in the case.

The counties want a choice of touch-screen electronic voting machines. Currently, only a touch-screen machine made by North Canton-based Diebold Election Systems has met federal and state certification requirements. ES&S claims Blackwell's certification deadlines were unfair; Blackwell says all vendors were treated equally.

The two parties have been in discussions, along with the counties that joined the lawsuit, but no agreement on the larger issues of the case has been reached.

On Wednesday, Blackwell's office and the counties agreed to temporarily extend the deadline for ing vendors to Sept. 15 and for certification to Nov. 1, Blackwell spokesman Carlo LoParo said.

ES&S says it will meet certification 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.

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.

The counties that have joined the suit are Allen, Auglaize, Brown, Champaign, Clermont, Clinton, Delaware, Fayette, Franklin, Hamilton, Knox, Lake, Logan, Madison, Mahoning, Meigs, Monroe, Noble, Ottawa, Pickaway, Preble, Putnam, Ross, Sandusky, Seneca, Shelby, Summit, Tuscarawas, Union,Washington, Williams and Wyandotte.

Ohio's 56 other counties have ed vendors, LoParo said.