New election system could cost Putnam voters $70,000
By DAVID TRINKO    Lima News   10/23/2005

   OTTAWA ? An elections board official in Putnam County expressed his frustration with the ?boneheads in Columbus? who mandated a new elections system that could cost the county $50,000 to $70,000.
   The Board of Elections officials met with the Putnam County commissioners Wednesday to discuss their needs for the new state-required voting machines. One board member vented about the struggles preparing for the new system by Electronic Systems and Software.
   ?The trouble is the boneheads in Columbus didn?t research it,? elections board member Lyle McKanna said. ?They listened to people who didn?t know what they?re talking about. The elections people had no voice. Now we have this albatross we have to live with.?
   The state-mandated new systems must be in place by the May 2006 primary, and the county doesn?t expect to receive its 132 new suitcase-sized machines until after Jan. 1.
   Jeremy Demagall, the Northwest Ohio regional representative to Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell?s office, took the brunt of the criticism during Wednesday?s meeting. The commis-sioners tried to get an estimate how much the new systems would cost, but he couldn?t offer an exact answer. Demagall said the state hasn?t finalized its contract with vendors and didn?t know for certain how much the machines would cost.
   ?You don?t know a whole lot, do you?? Commissioner Tom Price asked Demagall toward the end of the meeting.
   Ginger Price, the director of the Putnam County Board of Elections, said she?d heard the new machines could cost $3,200 each, with a federal grant kicking in $2,700 to $2,900 per ma-chine.
   The new electronic machines replace 27-year-old voting machines the county already had. One selling point for the new machines is a printout voters can verify before leaving their polling place, Demagall said.
   ?The whole goal is to make sure the election is fair,? he said. ?When a voter sees the paper, they can vote for Candidate X, see that Candidate Y is on the paper, and they can cancel their vote. The voter can independently verify that my vote on the machine is right.?
   The new system also keeps voters from choosing two candidates in the same race and re-minds them if they?ve skipped an issue or race, he said.
   ?It?s going to be accepted if we ever get them here,? Diana Geiger said. ?I tell people it?s just like working your microwave.?
   McKanna said the existing system had four redundancies of its own but resigned himself to the new system?s arrival in January. Once it arrives, the county must find enough room to store all of the equipment, which measures about 40 inches high, 6 inches deep and 14 inches wide and weighs about 40 pounds. The county hopes to accommodate the machines by shifting state auditors from a courthouse office into the nearby courthouse annex.
   ?The legislature dreamed this up. It?s a disaster,? he said. ?We don?t have to like it. It costs so much money, it?s ridiculous if you ask me. They took a perfectly good system and ruined it.?