Ross County may still get electronic voting machines
Elections board must choose type before June 1

By DANIEL PRAZER
Gazette Staff Writer

Ross County may have a shot at having a batch of new voting machines for free.

After being originally told it would not be eligible for federal and state money to purchase electronic polling machines because the county already uses push-button electronic devices, the Ross Count Board of Elections has been told otherwise.

It has until June 1 to make a ion or risk losing the funding, part of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), passed in the wake of the 2000 presidential election controversy. Counties have a choice of three electronic voting systems approved by Ohio's secretary of state, all of which use touch screens.

"I hate to change because we have such a good system, but my fear is I don't want to be odd man out, ... the only county in the state of Ohio with a different system," said Board of Elections deputy director Nora Madru.

The county's current voting machines were put in place in 1996. Paid for by the county, the machines are starting to be more difficult to service and keep up to date MicroVote General Corp. no longer manufactures the model used in Ross County.

And since MicroVote isn't one of the three contractors approved by the state to receive the HAVA funding, board of elections director Nancy Bell worries that MicroVote wouldn't have an incentive to service the machines in a timely manner were Ross County to be the only board in the state to use its products.

"We can buy anything we want to if we want to pay for it out of our own pockets," said Bell. "If we don't jump on this, it's going to be the county paying for it again."

Board member Don Fuller wanted to wait until the next board meeting on May 1 to decide whether to change, but said he didn't want to change. In the meantime, Bell will try to get representatives from the three companies approved in Ohio's HAVA funding to come to Ross County to demonstrate their products for the board and the county commissioners.

"I'd like to hold on with what we have," Fuller said. "We've got a damn good system. It works. It's the best in the state."

Board President Steve Madru said this year's primary election is a prime example of why the county's current machines are some of the state's best the recount of the Chillicothe City Schools' levy was exactly the same as the original count except for one paper absentee ballot that wasn't marked dark enough.

The county already has approval for state and federal HAVA funding to buy handicapped-accessible voting machines for each precinct.