And the winners are ... (wait) ... (wait) ...

“The waiting is the hardest part.”

Tom Petty’s words were repeated by candidates for Campbell City Council’s 4th Ward and a seat on the Poland Board of Education. The candidates had to wait until Tuesday, four weeks after the election, to find out who won and who lost the two tight races.

That’s primarily because of state laws that require elections boards to wait to count certain votes.

But the Campbell and Poland candidates should consider themselves lucky.

It took an hour for the Mahoning County Board of Elections to do the recount Tuesday, and about another hour to roll up the paper ballots.

Races decided by 0.5 percent or less triggers an automatic recount. Counties like Mahoning that use electronic, touch-screen machines have to count the machines’ paper backups when conducting recounts. The counties have to hand count at least 3 percent of the vote for recounts.

Turnout for last month’s election was very light and voters only had a handful of candidates and issues on the ballot.

Next year’s March primary and November general election are completely different stories. The ballot will be filled with presidential and congressional candidates as well as those running for numerous county and state Legislature seats and local tax issues and liquor options.

The actual size of the ballots and voter turnout will be significantly larger next year.

That means if there is a race that triggers an automatic recount, it’s going to make the nearly two hours spent on Tuesday’s recount seem like a leisurely stroll.

Also, if the hand count of the 3 percent or so of paper ballots doesn’t exactly match up to the vote totals compiled by the touch-screen machines, every vote tallied on the paper ballots from the race in question must be counted by hand.

Campbell

It took about two hours to recount and then roll up the paper ballots from a small sampling of Campbell’s 4th Ward, a race that had less than 650 votes cast.

In the 2004 Democratic primary, countywide races attracted more than 50,000 voters. The November general election that year saw more than 120,000 cast ballots.

If turnout for the presidential election in the county in 2008 is as strong as it was in 2004, and there’s no reason to believe it won’t be, that would mean a hand count of 3,600 voters from various precincts.

The Campbell and Poland recounts were a tiny fraction of that number. After those recounts, the floor at the elections board’s meeting room looked like a miniature version of New Year’s Eve in Times Square.

The rolls of 15-pound paper, about four inches wide, were all over the place. Also, because the paper is so thin, it bends easily and there is a decent chance it can rip.

A recount next year would take several hours. After looking for certain numbers on paper filled with hundreds or thousands of numbers, your eyes can easily play tricks on you. One simple, innocent mistake that throws the recount off by just one number means a hand count of the entire county.

Backup system

The paper backup system was put in place by the state Legislature because of voting problems during the 2004 election.

It was supposed to restore the faith of those who questioned the integrity of touch-screens.

Maybe it has for some people, but the reality is adding the paper trail has caused more concerns in at least Mahoning County.

Putting the paper add-on to the machines has compromised voter privacy. To add the paper ballot component, the elections board had to remove the top of the voting machines. That led to the sides of the machines to be wide open unless a voter purposely closes them, and even that doesn’t work in every case. The end result it’s easy to see how a person votes.

Also voters can’t review the paper ballot unless they vote in a race and then look to their left to see if it matches the electronic vote. There’s no way to do a final review of the paper ballots.

On top of this, Mahoning elections officials acknowledge there are still poll workers who struggle to do their jobs.

Instead of a system that instills confidence in voters, we have one that raises many questions and concerns.