Director notes delay in ballot programming

There are a couple of reasons for the delay, the director said.
By DAVID SKOLNICK
VINDICATOR POLITICS WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Ballots won't be programmed into some of Mahoning County's 1,187 electronic voting machines until the day before the May 2 primary, the county's elections board director says.
The board typically has its voting machines programmed about 10 days before an election, said Director Thomas McCabe.
The reason for the delay is twofold, he said. State law requires the county to add a paper audit trail to its voting machines, a time-consuming effort. Also, Election Systems & amp; Software, the county's election machine vendor, waited until March 24 to start the work.
The company originally planned to start the work in January, but kept pushing it back, McCabe said.
The company is installing the paper trail as well as making other minor modifications to the machines and should be done with the work either today or Friday, said Randy Slusarz, ES & amp;S's project manager for this job.
ES & amp;S is also testing each machine to make sure the paper audit is working, he said. About 25 people, including those from a subcontractor, are working on the machines.
Tests before delivery
When ES & amp;S leaves, McCabe said he, along with two full-time board employees and eight to 10 part-timers, will program, test and then deliver the voting machines to the polling places. The workers will have to work long shifts and Saturdays to get the work done in time for the primary, McCabe said.
"It's a lengthy process that we can't start until [ES & amp;S is] out of here," he said. "But one way or the other, we'll have an election on May 2."
The board is holding training seminars from Monday through April 29 to familiarize poll workers with the paper audit trail.
Mahoning is the only county in Ohio that needed a paper trail add-on for ES & amp;S electronic voting machines. The paper trail costs $640 a machine.
Mahoning County's election system cost $3.81 million. The county received $2.8 million in federal funds for the system this year.
skolnick@vindy.com