New election bill a stop-gap measure pending true reform

The passage last week of H.B. 5 by the Ohio House may help assuage fears that Ohio could run into the same problems Florida did in last November's election, but the legislature should not confuse a stop-gap measure on chads with real reform on election procedures. While major changes in the way elections are conducted in the state cannot and should not be effected over night, Ohio's counties must be willing to move from the increasingly expensive methods of the past toward the greater efficiencies new technology can achieve.
Up to the county: In most states, counties have the prerogative to choose whatever means of voting they prefer. And until the fiasco that held in abeyance the results of the last presidential balloting, if the machines weren't totally accurate, if there were a few undercounts or overcounts, nobody was too concerned. After all, in cases where the totals of two candidates were extraordinarily close, a recount could make the final determination.
But from the experience of Florida, where counts and recounts seemed interminable -- a consortium of newspapers is still examining that state's ballots -- it became apparent that the kind of voting apparatus and the style of the ballots could greatly affect the outcome. The Miami Herald reported that even with the optical-scan voting systems that simply required voters to fill in the "bubble" adjacent to the name of their preferred candidate, 2,119 went uncounted because voters found ways to make their ballots unreadable: some using their own writing implements instead of using the ones in the booth, others marking bubbles with x's instead of filling in the bubbles and others drawing in their own ovals.
New technology: While that part of the new Ohio bill that instructs election boards how to deal with chads has received the most attention, the measure -- which must still be passed by the Senate -- also creates an Elections Systems Study Committee, which will conduct an in-depth examination of voting machines and funding methods for investing in new voting technology.
While almost any new system will be costly at first, the savings generated should more than offset the initial expense. No system can be foolproof, but the method that allows the most citizens to cast valid ballots will be the best for Ohio and the nation.