Secretary of state should investigate elections flap

To hear officials of the Mahoning County Board of Elections tell it, the problems experienced during the May 2 primary can be traced to the failure of county commissioners to pay the $610,000 owed to Election Systems & amp; Software, the vendor of the touch-screen voting system.
To hear county Administrator George Tablack tell it, the fault lies with the board of elections, which failed to submit the proper state mandated paperwork that would have allowed the commissioners to make payment to ES & amp;S.
The public needs to hear from Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell.
We urge Blackwell, the Republican nominee for governor, to first and foremost find out who is to blame for what turned out to be a problem-filled primary election; then, to determine why the board of elections would enter into an agreement with the voting system vendor that does not guarantee the company's total involvement in elections; and finally, to provide an answer to this question: Does the elections board have to follow state law with regard to the purchase of equipment?
Finger pointing
The answer to that question, which we're told the elections board Director Thomas McCabe is researching locally, will go a long way toward establishing how the board of elections and the county commissioners should interact. The finger pointing that the public is witnessing is unacceptable.
That's why the secretary of state's involvement is so important. An objective evaluation is necessary.
Shortly after the May 2 primary, we urged the boards of elections in Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties to explain why the complete, but unofficial, vote totals were not available until past midnight. Of the three counties, two, Trumbull and Columbiana, were using newer voting systems and, therefore, could have legitimate reasons for their glitches.
But not so Mahoning County, which has had the electronic touch-screen system since 2002. And while elections officials could argue that the May primary was the first election in which the state-mandated paper record was added to the system, we would note that boards of elections had ample time to prepare. They were told what was involved and vendors of elections systems in Ohio had months to not only upgrade their equipment, but to train local officials on the proper use of the paper readout feature.
In Mahoning County, not all the poll workers were trained on touch-screen machines with the paper readout attachment. Why?
Secretary of State Blackwell, whose office is investigating problems experienced May 2 in Cuyahoga County, should send some of his elections experts to Mahoning County. The public must be reassured that the people running the elections know what they're doing and are doing it in accordance with state law.