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Election boss now says space crunch slowed vote count
Kelly defends Lucas County plan

By JOSHUA BOAK    Toledo BLADE   15 November 2005
On election night, as the hours dragged on and vote results were not forthcoming, Lucas County Elections Director Jill Kelly blamed "the community" for not responding to her requests for enough paid volunteers to help run the elections.

On Thursday, facing heavy criticism for results delivered at 9 a.m. Wednesday - the last of Ohio's 88 counties - and the decision to close the elections office Wednesday, Ms. Kelly defended her office. She blamed a "rover" system for collecting the results from the 324 precincts as one of the reasons for the slow election count.

Yesterday, nearly a week after the election and an announcement that the Ohio secretary of state's office will investigate, the elections board is now blaming a need for more office space as the "primary" reason for the ballot count to drag on more than 13 hours.

"Part of the problem was not so much rover-poll worker as it was our lack of space in which to process the election results," Ms. Kelly said.

It was a redirection of blame to a claim made previously, but which was overshadowed by the poll worker and rover issues.

Patrick Kriner, one of the newly appointed Republican board of elections members and a past Lucas County Republican Party chairman, said Wednesday that space for only six tabulation machines in the board's offices had contributed to the slow results.

Ms. Kelly and Mike Badik, the deputy elections director, later agreed that the space problem created a bottleneck and was the "primary" reason for the delay.

The board could only squeeze six Diebold AccuVote TSX machines, which record votes and tabulate returns, into a secure room with double locks at its Government Center headquarters.

The situation became so desperate that a representative from Diebold, the machines' manufacturer, suggested at midnight that the board knock out an office wall to make room for additional machines, Mr. Badik said.

He recalled his stunned reaction to the recommendation:

"And we were ... 'You're telling us now?' "

Before the election, the board did not gauge how long the ballot count would take, Ms. Kelly said. It was told that 12 machines would be optimal for the ballot count and consulted with Diebold about how long it would take to calculate results, Mr. Badik said.

"We were asking for an estimate," Mr. Badik said. "We never received one."

David Bear, a Diebold spokesman, said the company attempted to facilitate priorities determined by the board rather than dictate how the machines should be used.

"We followed the recommendation of the county, because, ultimately, they run the election," he said.

The board considered moving its server and voting machines out of the "Global Election Management System" room to a larger space but decided that a sudden move might cause some to become suspicious about the security and validity of the vote count.

"Appearance is important to people," Ms. Kelly said.

In total, five of the machines uploaded 1,665 memory cards, with the sixth machine used to correct cards that were improperly closed out.

During the course of 13 hours, it took about 2 minutes and 20 seconds to upload the vote results from each memory card.

If the board had doubled how many machines it used, the unofficial results could have been announced at 3 a.m. Wednesday, instead of six hours and a sunrise later.

By way of comparison, Montgomery County, where Dayton is located, used 13 machines to count votes.

Their turnout of 128,667 voters was slightly less than Lucas County's 136,860 voters, said Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for the Ohio Secretary of State.

"Our team will review the management plan developed by the Lucas County Board of Elections for election night and take it from there," Mr. LoParo said.

After reviewing the election with rovers and poll workers at an upcoming and unscheduled luncheon, the board will launch its own internal investigation, Ms. Kelly said.

"We want to, first of all, use this luncheon as a thank you, because people worked extremely hard," said Ms. Kelly, who added that input from the 2,000 paid volunteers would help "tweak" election day procedures.

Ms. Kelly yesterday handed out the different manuals given to poll workers and rovers to guide them at the polls. Thorough to a comma, the standard 46-page guide listed 54 unique steps for closing the polls.

"To suggest that there was no plan and to suggest that there was no structure is just patently untrue," said Ms. Kelly, her voice hoarse after the election's manic rush.



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