Ballot count continues in Cuyahoga County

Poll workers need better training, some say.
CLEVELAND (AP) -- The state's largest county continued counting -- and searching for -- votes two days after the primary election, Ohio's first without punch-card ballots.
Vote-holding memory cards from 20 polling locations were still missing Thursday in Cleveland's Cuyahoga County. Board of election workers continued painstaking hand counts of more than 17,000 paper ballots that could not be read by new optical scan machines. Officials predicted the count could go into the weekend.
Election officials blame machines manufacturer Diebold Inc. for not doing tests early enough to fix any problems with the optical scan counters. Diebold said the issue appears to be the fault of the county, which used a new company to print ballots that didn't have the proper layout to be read electronically.
Issues
The snags in Cuyahoga and elsewhere in Ohio highlighted several issues, including poll worker training that some say needs to be improved before November when millions more are expected to vote on electronic machines. Touch-screen and optical scan equipment was used statewide for the first time Tuesday, when only 13 percent of registered voters cast ballots.
"For heaven's sake only about 15 percent of people voted. What would have happened if we had a real election?" said Chris Link, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio. The group fielded dozens of voter complaints Tuesday, she said.
Federal, state and local officials need to create better backup plans to quickly address problems with poll worker training and other issues, Link said.
Scattered across Ohio were reports of jammed printers that were to spit out vote receipts, poll workers unable to turn on or set up machines, voters being turned away because of confusion with machines and lost vote-holding memory cards, including some from 74 locations at one point in Cuyahoga County.
In Butler County in southwest Ohio, deputy elections chief Betty McGary said some poll workers improperly programmed memory cards, resulting in voters seeing the wrong ballot on their screens before getting help from roving technicians.
Instruction
The county is considering adding poll worker instruction to the three hours currently required and is discussing putting a troubleshooter at each precinct, she said.
"I've found that the best advice for every elections board is to plan for the worst-case scenario and always have a safety net in place," McGary said.
Matthew Damschroder, elections chief in Franklin County, said additional instruction would be offered to election workers in his county before November. About 50 people left without voting in the Columbus area when polling sites opened late because employees couldn't figure out how to fix mistakes they made setting up machines.
Damschroder said some errors are to be expected and things will go smoother as the system gets more use.
"It really is easier to use; it's just different," he said. "It's going to take time to get used to."
The counting in Cuyahoga delayed results in various local races, but the number of outstanding votes was too small to affect races for governor, Congress and statewide offices.
As of Thursday afternoon, about 98 percent, or 1,413 of the county's 1,435 precincts, had been counted.
Election officials holed up in meetings refused to answer media questions Thursday.
On Wednesday, Cuyahoga County board chairman and state GOP chairman Robert Bennett said one in five of the county's 7,500 elections workers did not show up at polls Tuesday. Others reported hours late.
'Sufficient training'
Board director Michael Vu said Cuyahoga poll workers received three hours of training, including a DVD, color step-by-step guide and practice at the library. He said 80 percent of the county's precincts had no problems.
"I believe we provided sufficient training, I believe we provided sufficient tools for poll workers to be trained properly," he said.
About 20 of the Cuyahoga memory cards were found still loaded in machines, but officials continued searching Thursday for others. If they aren't found, votes will be tabulated by reading the paper backups.
"We're going to make sure that every vote counts," Bennett said.
Mishandling of the memory cards occurred in Cuyahoga and Stark counties despite a March 31 directive from the secretary of state's office to protect them from loss or tampering.
"Cards should be maintained in the most secure fashion possible," the directive urged.