Procedural questions plague board

The board set a hearing date to explore whether one man voted illegally.
WARREN -- It was expected voters and election workers would have some trouble with technology connected with the county's using touch-screen voting equipment for the first time last month.
The procedural legal problems that have cropped up were not expected.
The Trumbull County Board of Elections has had two executive sessions to discuss the work of deputy director Rokey Suleman II and director Kelly S. Pallante.
Board member Craig Bonar said Tuesday that their jobs are not on the line, but that he did want to make the board aware of issues.
"We are questioning some of their decision-making," Bonar said. In some instances in this election, board workers made decisions that should have been left to the elections board, he said.
For example, when the board met last week, questions were raised about whether certain paper ballots could be counted or not because of procedural matters.
Separation issue
The answers Pallante and Suleman gave were that some could not be added or taken away because the provisional ballots were separated from the envelope that indicated who the voter was.
The separation was past practice in the office. The latest separation was done by staffers because their superiors had decided -- based upon past experiences -- that certain errors by voters were bad enough for their votes to be canceled out, and others were not.
"In the future, we should add a step before we separate those," Bonar said, noting such issues should first come before the elections board.
Now that the provisional ballot results are being questioned and certification of the results being held up, the separation issue has angered several candidates who are having to wait extra time for the results.
"What happened was wrong to begin with," said Debbie Roth, a victorious LaBrae school board candidate who has attended the last two meetings to see who would finish second in the race. Tim Gibson leads Roger L. Cope 863-861 for that seat.
Eligibility challenged
Roth was referring to the separation of the votes, which came into play in the LaBrae race because Roth has challenged the eligibility of Philip C. O'Bradovich, who listed an address of 1105 N.W. North River Road, Warren.
Roth's letter to the board says that address is a commercial property and that O'Bradovich does not live there, "and therefore is ineligible to vote in Warren Township, Precinct E."
The board agreed to hold a hearing Jan. 3 to determine whether O'Bradovich's vote was illegal and whether to turn the matter over to the Trumbull County Prosecutor's office.
However, because O'Bradovich's vote was a provisional ballot and his envelope and ballot were separated, his votes will have to be counted, the board agreed.
"We will have to sit down after the first of the year and address policies," board member Sherron Platt said, adding she didn't consider it a problem with the board director and deputy director.