Cuyahoga County's rocky election night leaves a lot of questions  (OH)

Joe Guillen    Cleveland Plain Dealer    08 November 2007

Cuyahoga County elections officials dubbed Tuesday's election a success, although they were not able to report final vote totals until 11:30 a.m. Wednesday. That's 10 to 12 hours later than reports from seven other Ohio counties, and 16 hours after polls closed, raising new doubts about whether the county's electronic voting system can handle the November 2008 presidential election.

As of Wednesday afternoon, officials still could not say what caused vote-counting equipment to repeatedly malfunction election night. That has Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner fretting about what will happen in the March primary.

"Cuyahoga is going to have to take a very hard look at the suitability of their voting system for handling a much larger capacity in the primary election," Brunner said.

What happened Tuesday?

The computer software that downloads vote totals crashed twice. Elections workers restarted the system both times and no votes were lost, but the glitches delayed results about an hour.

Elections officials and the voting-machine maker both claim to be blameless.

A spokesman for Diebold Election Solutions, now operating as Premier Elections Solutions, suggested votes were being downloaded too fast Tuesday night.

"It's not OK, and it's not insurmountable," said Chris Riggall. "It's certainly not how you want your vote tabulation to go."

Brunner said elections workers did not cause the glitches.

"Last night was clearly a technology problem that they're still waiting for answers on," Brunner said.

Otherwise, elections chief Jane Platten said the board laid a good foundation for next year. Although final unofficial results didn't come in until almost noon Wednesday, about 99 percent of results were counted by about 1 a.m. Misplaced memory cards delayed results further.

Is Cuyahoga County too big for Diebold's touch-screen system?

The equipment failures Tuesday night fueled the fears of state and local leaders about the electronic voting equipment. They worry that increased voter turnout for the presidential election - between 75 and 80 percent is predicted - could be too much for their system to handle.

Computer problems on Tuesday weren't exactly a confidence-booster.

Baltimore used the same Diebold system Tuesday. Although nearly all votes were counted by 11 p.m. with no computer problems, results were delayed because a couple of memory cards were misplaced.

Riggall said Cuyahoga County's system is capable of handling the presidential election.

Three smaller Ohio counties - Lucas, Montgomery and Stark - used the Diebold system Tuesday and reported results before midnight.

What about scrapping the Diebold system?

Cuyahoga County commissioners want the election board to switch to hand-marked ballots that would be tallied by optical scanners.

Nobody has determined exactly how much a switch would cost, and election officials cringe at the thought of again training poll workers on new equipment.

King County, Wash., which includes Seattle, recently spent close to $1 million to buy 18 optical scan machines to read ballots cast. But the equipment is just a portion of the overall costs, according to Brunner. The county also bought equipment designed to figure out voter intent on ballots that cannot be read by the scanners.

There are also the costs of ballots and voting stations and training costs, Brunner said.

Are optical scanners any better?

If it weren't for Cuyahoga, Hamilton County would have been the last of Ohio's big counties to finish counting the votes in Tuesday's election.

The Cincinnati-based board, which uses scanners rather touch screens, posted 100 percent results at 1:40 a.m. Wednesday.

People and computers were both to blame, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. Some memory chips that held totals from various precincts arrived late at the board's Cincinnati office. Others didn't work properly.

"Optical scanners are not a panacea," Brunner said Wednesday afternoon.

Are election-night totals a thing of the past?

The late reporting of vote totals just might be inevitable with electronic voting.

"I think sometimes the technology gets in the way," Brunner said.

She expects a study of the state's voting machines to see whether the technology can be faster.

According to Platten, the delays are not a problem. The goal, she said, is accuracy rather than speed.

So the days of getting election results before you go to bed may be over. But after you wake up, you should know with certainty who won.