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By Staff and wire reports
POSTED: 07:32 p.m. EST, Jan 03, 2008
The state's top elections official has ordered 55 counties that use electronic touch-screen voting machines to provide paper ballots for voters who request them during the March 4 primary.
Stark, Medina, Portage and Wayne counties all have touch-screen systems.
Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has made clear she does not trust touch-screen machines and wants all 88 Ohio counties to switch to optical-scan systems by the November election.
Summit uses optical-scan machines, which involve a voter hand-marking a paper ballot that can be read by a computer.
Voters in the primary who don't want to use touch-screen machines should have the option of using a paper ballot, Brunner said.
Brunner's directive requires counties to multiply the number of ballots cast in each precinct at previous presidential primary elections by 10 percent to determine the minimum number of ballots to print for each precinct.
Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections in Columbus and president of the Ohio Association of Election Officials, said complying with the order will be difficult with the primary only two months away.
He also questioned how counties will be able to produce timely results on election night when they will have to combine electronic and optical-scan counts from each precinct.
''Election officials are disappointed that this secretary of state chose to wait until the 62nd day before an election to make such a dramatic and unilateral overhaul of Ohio election rules,'' Damschroder said.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio called it ''a recipe for disaster,'' saying it will cause confusion among poll workers and voters as well as logistical and financial problems for counties.
The state's top elections official has ordered 55 counties that use electronic touch-screen voting machines to provide paper ballots for voters who request them during the March 4 primary.
Stark, Medina, Portage and Wayne counties all have touch-screen systems.
Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has made clear she does not trust touch-screen machines and wants all 88 Ohio counties to switch to optical-scan systems by the November election.
Summit uses optical-scan machines, which involve a voter hand-marking a paper ballot that can be read by a computer.
Voters in the primary who don't want to use touch-screen machines should have the option of using a paper ballot, Brunner said.
Brunner's directive requires counties to multiply the number of ballots cast in each precinct at previous presidential primary elections by 10 percent to determine the minimum number of ballots to print for each precinct.
Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections in Columbus and president of the Ohio Association of Election Officials, said complying with the order will be difficult with the primary only two months away.
He also questioned how counties will be able to produce timely results on election night when they will have to combine electronic and optical-scan counts from each precinct.
''Election officials are disappointed that this secretary of state chose to wait until the 62nd day before an election to make such a dramatic and unilateral overhaul of Ohio election rules,'' Damschroder said.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio called it ''a recipe for disaster,'' saying it will cause confusion among poll workers and voters as well as logistical and financial problems for counties.
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