NBC 4  Columbus Ohio    09 January 2008

COLUMBUS, Ohio Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said her office is investigating the Franklin County Board of Elections for possible voting problems.

The announcement was made after Franklin County Elections Director Matthew Damschroder criticized Brunner for directing counties to print additional paper ballots for the March primary voters who don't trust electronic voting machines, NBC 4's Patrick Preston reported.

Brunner told NBC 4 on Wednesday that her office is looking into several issues within Franklin County, including ballots that did not match in the November election and voting machines that could not be audited for accuracy.

"In addition to that, we've found in our study that Franklin County doesn't follow basic security practices such as logic and accuracy testing every voting machine that they use. They simply test one machine per precinct and that's insufficient. It's substandard and it's a great disappointment," Brunner said.

Brunner’s spokesperson Patrick Gallaway said Democratic judicial candidate Jay Perez’s name appeared on paper ballots and some electronic ballots after he withdrew from his Franklin County Municipal Court race in November. Republican David Tyack won the election, defeating Democrat Patsy Thomas by a margin less than the 7,000 votes. Despite his withdrawal, Perez received more than 12,000 votes.

Franklin County Board of Elections spokesperson Ben Piscatelli said workers are cooperating with the investigation, but would not comment further.

With the March 4 primary looming, Damschroder has criticized Brunner for the cost of printing additional paper ballots. Last month, Brunner announced the results of a study of Ohio’s electronic voting machines that revealed critical security failures. Damschroder believes the vulnerabilities can be addressed with human controls that are less costly than Brunner’s recommendations.

"We believe that our voting system is very secure and very accurate and that it tabulates people's votes correctly and there isn't cause for concern," Damschroder said.

He estimated those costs to be as high as $200,000 for Franklin County. But Damschroder bases his figure on a county prosecutor’s interpretation of law that would require the county to provide enough paper ballot for 100 percent of the number of voters who took part in the 2004 presidential primary, plus an additional one percent.

Brunner says Damschroder is basing his numbers on the wrong state statute. As she interprets the law, counties only have to provide ballots for ten percent of voters in a similar election, not 100 percent. The cost difference for Franklin County would be in the neighborhood of $180,000.

"I think Matt's problem here is he just doesn't want to play by the rules and so he's manufactured this problem and it's just a question of whether he's going to follow the directive or not follow the directive," Brunner said.

The board of elections meets on Friday to determine whether to print paper ballots for 100 percent of expected voters. By Damschroder’s count, that equates to approximately 550,000 paper ballots. Brunner says it would be foolish and a waste of money to provide paper ballots for all voters.

Gallaway could not say when the investigation of the Franklin County Board of Elections would be complete.