Group wants to scrap electronic vote machines

Tallies taken at polling
places would be comparable to the system in use in Canada.

By MARC KOVAC

VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT

COLUMBUS — Ohio should switch to paper ballots, counted by hand on election night, and get rid of the federally mandated electronic voting devices now in use across the state, an advocates group says.

The Ohio Election Justice Campaign also has called on Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to decertify the electronic voting machines and demand refunds from their manufacturers.

Or, at the very least, elections officials should be prepared to “quarantine” devices that are not working properly until they can be fully investigated by the proper authorities.

“The electronic election systems have been widely documented as unreliable, inaccurate and subject to manipulation,” said Paddy Shaffer, director of the effort. “California decertified its electronic voting machines. ... Florida tossed them out, and New York has not even introduced them.”

Shaffer described the group as national in scope and made up of citizens and activists who are concerned about the direction of Ohio’s elections. Members voiced concern about a review under way by the secretary of state’s office of the state’s election systems, about county boards of elections across Ohio that discarded and/or destroyed records following the 2004 contest and about problems with electronic voting devices.

On the latter, they cited, among other issues, examples of “vote hopping” in Ohio precincts — voting machines that recorded a choice different than the candidates selected by users.

“We must not trust the recording of our vote to unobservable memory chips and data bases,” said Teresa Blakely, a citizen member of the campaign. “Thousands of votes can be altered undetected by a few insiders or by outsiders if modems are used to transfer votes between precincts. Why are we paying extraordinary sums of taxpayer money to purchase voting machines that digitally record unobservable votes?”

The group advocates changing to hand-counted paper ballots, with tallies taken at polling places — comparable to the system in use in Canada. Shaffer said the touch-screen and optical scan devices should be recalled before next year’s presidential election. And if not, then machines that aren’t working properly should be taken into custody of police or investigators on the spot and thoroughly reviewed.

mkovac@dixcom.com