Board of Elections convinced its on the right track

Board of Elections convinced its on the right track
EDITOR:
The Vindicator's March 1 editorial regarding the board of elections contained a number of errors that need to be corrected.
First, Secretary of State Blackwell's announcement that Ohio would adopt a uniform voting system was misleading. He announced that it was his plan to have optical scan become the "primary" voting system in Ohio, to meet the federal requirements under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). However, under Ohio law, boards of elections still have the exclusive authority to select a voting system that will be used in the county, as long as the system has been certified for use by the state. Attorney General Jim Petro confirmed in a Feb. 8 opinion that Blackwell lacks the statutory authority to impose a single type of voting system statewide. What Blackwell is correctly trying to do is get Ohio counties to come into compliance with the HAVA requirement for voting machines, a requirement that Mahoning County has met since 2002. The County Commissioners Association, which originally supported Blackwell's attempt to move toward optical scan, has now backed away from that support in light of the high cost of ballot printing. If Mahoning County is forced to adopt optical scan, the county would be faced with new expenses for ballot printing which will run around $200,000 per year, money the county does not have.
Second, The Vindicator incorrectly refers to the "voter verified paper audit trail" as being required by Ohio to comply with HAVA. A paper audit trail is not part of the federal requirement. The Ohio legislature adopted a requirement that electronic voting machines have a "voter verified" paper audit trail beginning in 2006. Unfortunately, the legislature was mandating technology that did not exist, and even today no paper audit trail device has been certified for use in Ohio. For that reason, Mahoning County, along with a number of other counties, is seeking a waiver or postponement of the paper trail requirement until it is technologically and economically possible to implement. Even if it becomes possible to add a "paper trail" feature, our board agrees that it will be an unnecessary option that will slow down voting and cause technical and other problems.
Third, The Vindicator has incorrectly reported that on Election Day, "votes for one candidate were recorded for another candidate. & quot; It's true that out of some 1,200 voting machines, there were possibly 25 that had a calibration issue that sometimes made candidate selection harder than it should be, but in every case, once a selection was made and confirmed by the voter, the voter's choice was properly recorded. We don't mean to minimize the difficulty that some voters might have had in making a selection on one of those 25 machines, or the importance of our resolving the problem, but it's important to know that once was the red "VOTE" button was pushed, each vote was properly recorded.
MARK E. MUNROE
Chairman
Mahoning County Board of Elections
Politicians: Time to step up
EDITOR:
What we have in the counties of Northeastern Ohio is not a fiscal crisis, but a leadership crisis. Local politicians are caving in to a group of tight-fisted voters who put their desire to save a few pennies in taxes ahead of public safety.
I resent the fact that the safety of my family is put at risk because these cowardly politicians are more concerned with their own political futures than the safety of their constituents. They have the power to retain a sufficient number of police, fire and 911 personnel by imposing the half-cent sales tax. It's time for them to step up to the plate.
PAUL F. FREW
Youngstown