Judge to decide whether to extend deadlines

JOHN McCARTHY   Associated Press    01 June 2005

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A judge planned to decide Thursday whether to approve an agreement to extend the deadlines for ion and certification of voting machine systems for 32 counties that have sued the state's chief elections official.

The counties want a choice of touch-screen electronic voting machines. Currently, only a touch-screen machine made by Diebold Election Systems has met federal and state certification requirements.

Election Systems & Software last month filed a lawsuit to stop Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell from enforcing his directive that systems be certified by May 13. 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 core 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, pending agreement on other issues in the case, Blackwell spokesman Carlo LoParo said.

The extension must be approved by Judge Dale Crawford of Franklin County Common Pleas Court. He was expected to rule Thursday. A hearing in the case will be held in late July, 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.