Boards of elections must explain what happened

The polls in Ohio closed at 7:30 p.m. for Tuesday's primary election, but most residents in Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties went to bed that night without knowing all the results. That's because the press didn't get the complete, but unofficial, vote totals until past midnight.
Why?
It's a question we expect the boards of elections in all three counties to answer with an official report. We also look forward to elections officials detailing how they intend to make sure there isn't a repeat of Tuesday night's fiasco.
"We have improvements to make, but we aren't alone in this," Thomas McCabe, Mahoning elections board director told The Vindicator. Frankly, we don't care what took place in the rest of the state. Our concern is with the way elections are conducted in the Mahoning Valley -- and we aren't satisfied.
Elections are the reason boards of elections exist. Everything else they do is secondary. And, between each election -- the primary in May and the general in November -- they have six months to prepare. There is a disruption in that schedule only when a special election is held, which is rarely.
Of the three counties, two, Trumbull and Columbiana, were using newer voting systems and glitches were to be expected. But that does not mean the boards of elections deserve a pass. We urge them to identify clearly what went wrong, why it went wrong, and how they intend to make sure that the November general election and all subsequent ones are trouble free.
It is not too much to expect an election to be trouble free.
Hollow ring
In Mahoning County, however, the excuses for Tuesday's problems ring hollow. That's because the electronic touch-screen system has been in use since 2002. This primary was the first time that the state-mandated paper trail was added to the system, but elections officials knew about this change months ago.
It is inconceivable that not all the poll workers were trained on machines installed with the equipment that provides a paper readout of the votes cast on each touch-screen machine. Training is an important part of the preparation for an election and it is the responsibility of the board to ensure that everyone involved knows what to do and how and when to do it.
According to McCabe, a manual provided to the elections board by Election Systems & amp; Software, the voting machine vendor, contained errors that resulted in poll workers in Youngstown, Struthers and Campbell being wrongly trained. The workers were subsequently given the right information, but were not brought in for retraining. As a result, workers in 25 to 30 precincts, primarily in those three cities but in other communities as well, had trouble closing the machines.
As for those who did receive training, many had no exposure to the new equipment.
Taxpayers have a right to know whether ES & amp;S, the company that has made millions through its relationship with Mahoning County, will be sanctioned in any way for its role in Tuesday's primary being less than perfect.
It's not enough for elections officials in all three counties to say they intend to do better. Citizens have a right to know what steps they will take to ensure that accurate election results are made available before the clock strikes midnight.