Summit voters will use optical scanners
Blackwell chooses method over Diebold touch screens
By Doug Oplinger     Akron Beacon Journal   17 December 2005

Summit County voters next year will give up their punch-card ballots and begin using pencil and paper on Election Day.

Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell on Friday said he will impose the cheaper optical-scan voting system as opposed to touch screens on the county's 369,000 voters after the Summit County Board of Elections failed to pick a system by the state deadline.

As a result, Summit voters will be among the minority statewide using the pencil-and-paper, optically scanned ballots.

Among the state's seven other largest urban counties, all but Hamilton County (Cincinnati and its suburbs) decided to use touch-screen voting, as did the four other counties in this region: Medina, Portage, Stark and Wayne.

Blackwell's announcement says the Summit County package of machines from Election Systems and Software Inc. and AutoMark will cost at least $1 million less than the touch-screen machines produced by Diebold, headquartered in Green.

Summit County Board of Elections director Bryan Williams said he thinks the savings will be far more than $1 million. He said the county will buy one optical scanner for each precinct at a cost of $5,499 apiece, or a total of $4.2 million. If the county were to buy touch screens, it would need four for each precinct, at a cost of about $2,700 each, or more than $10,800 per precinct.

Although pencil and paper may sound like a technological step backward from punch cards, the optical scanners that check the ballots should help to reduce the number of votes that go uncounted because of voter error.

Beginning with the May primary, voters will be handed a two-sided ballot on a legal-size sheet of paper. They'll fill in circles corresponding to the candidates or issues they support, then the ballot into the precinct's scanner, which will warn them if they voted too many times in a race.

Each precinct also will be equipped with one multipurpose touch screen for voters with handicaps, including with sight and motor skills, Williams said.

The changes are being implemented to comply with federal law, which requires that every state have a voting system in place that warns voters if there is a fatal flaw in the way the ballot has been marked.

In choosing optical scanners over touch screens, Blackwell, a Republican who is running for governor, not only saved money but also sided with Summit County Republican Party Chairman Alex Arshinkoff, one of two Republicans on the county Board of Elections. Both Republicans liked the optically scanned ballots because a piece of paper backs up every vote.

The two Democrats on the board favored electronic touch-screen machines, saying they are the system of the future and are more popular among Ohio's 88 county boards.

According to Blackwell's office, 56 counties ed touch-screen systems from either Diebold or ES&S of Nebraska, and 32 ed optical scanners.

Arshinkoff and Summit County Democratic Party Chairman Russ Pry could not be reached Friday for comment.

Messages left with Diebold officials were not returned.