Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell took a step away from touch screen balloting in his effort to comply with federal election law, announcing the state's primary system would use pencils and dots and work like a standardized test.
Blackwell has been working to have all 88 Ohio counties comply with the Help America Vote Act since the 2000 presidential election.
James Lee, a spokesman for Blackwell, said the Ohio General Assembly's mandate in April 2004 for a voter-verifiable paper trail -not required by federal law -made the touch screen machines too expensive to have at all of Ohio's polling locations.
In light of high turnout (in the last election) and the need to have more voting equipment at each polling location
it was no longer economically feasible with federal money for our state to have electronic machines Lee said.
The main contender for the new system had been electronic touch screen voting, but the legislature voted to require all electronic machines to have both a voter-verifiable paper trail and one on record at a county's board of elections, said Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for Blackwell.
Touch screen machines would need to print out a voter's ballot to create the paper trail, making the process more time consuming and expensive, he said.
LoParo said before the legislature's new requirements, each touch screen machine cost $3,000, making the total cost $106 million. After April, the cost of touch screen machines rose by 20 percent -to $3,600 each -making the new price for all the machines $180 million.
Ohio only receives $132 million from the government to pay for voting machines and to ensure the state meets federal election requirements, LoParo said. The optical scan machines would cost about $100 million.
Under the new system, a ballot would list a position and all candidates running for it, said Athens County Board of Elections Chairwoman Susan Guinn. Voters would darken circles next to their choices and would be able to check all their choices after they had finished voting. The ballot would be fed through a card reader that would immediately reject the ballot if someone over-or under-voted.
If a voter makes any mistakes, they can go back and try again, Guinn said. If we feel there's a problem with the readers we can hand count (the ballots). It solves a lot of problems.
It's much easier with optical scan systems for voters to verify they're casting their ballot as they intended
Lee said.
During the 2004 presidential election, Athens County voters -like a majority of Ohioans -used punch card ballots, Guinn said. Ohio counties will have two choices of companies from whom to purchase their optical scan machines: Diebold Inc. and Elections Systems and Software.
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Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell answers questions at a news conference Dec. 6, 2004, in Columbus, Ohio after he certified the official state election results.
