Hamilton Co. picks optical-scan voting
$10M system to make debut with 2006 elections

By Kimball Perry    Cincinnati Enquirer    13 September 2005  
Dan Bare loves the optical-scanning voting system that Clermont County has used for more than a decade.

"It's great. It puts the ballot in the hand of the voters from cradle to grave," said Bare, director of the Clermont County Board of Elections.

That's the kind of experience Hamilton County hopes to have for its more than 573,000 registered voters when it switches to a $10 million optical-scanning voting system next year.

"The whole point of this is, what is the voter's intent (and) giving the voter total control of the ballot," said John Williams, director of Hamilton County's Board of Elections.

The board last week ed the eScan optical-voting system made by Hart InterCivic of Austin, Texas.

The optical scanners will replace the punch-card voting system in effect since 1974.

With the new system, voters will darken ovals on a paper ballot. That paper ballot is then fed into an optical scanner at the voter's precinct.

The scanner looks like a portable automated-teller machine.

It takes what essentially is a digital picture of the ballot and records those votes.

Voters will know immediately whether their ballot was accepted and, if it wasn't, what they did wrong so it can be corrected.

"It's kind of the best of the old world and the best of the new world," Williams said.

"We felt this would lend the most credibility to the voters - that they would be marking a piece of paper in their hand and not just have something go into a computer chip," Williams said.

The federal government is covering $8.35 million of the cost - as part of the Help America Vote Act - to modernize voting systems and avoid a repeat of the "hanging chad" controversy of the 2000 presidential election.

Clermont County has been using an optical-scanning system since 1993. That system used a central scanner at the Board of Elections. The new voting system that Clermont and Hamilton County chose has optical scanners in each precinct - 1,001 in Hamilton and 200 in Clermont.

The new system is more expensive than punch cards: Traditional punch-card ballots cost a half-cent each; ballots for the optical-scanner systems cost 18 cents each.

Another machine - eSlate by Hart InterCivic - also is available. It is designed for use by the disabled or as a backup when there are long lines for the other scanning machines.

Because federal legislation requires voting changes by 2006, the optical scanning system should be in place by Jan. 1, Williams said.

But he said it isn't expected to be used until the spring elections in May.

Warren County also plans to use an optical-scanner voting system.

Butler County has opted for a touch-screen system.