Onus on secretary of state to reassure voters in Ohio

An advocacy group that wants Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to get rid of the electronic voting machines has made some public claims about the system that must be addressed — to calm the fears of many voters.

That said, we believe the ongoing testing of the voting system, launched by Brunner over the summer, is appropriate and necessary. A final report that will be submitted to Gov. Ted Strickland and the General Assembly in mid-December.

The report of Project EVEREST will contain findings of the companies hired by the state to conduct the test of the voting system and recommendations from Brunner and a bipartisan group of Ohio elections officials.

“I realize that studies in California, Florida and Connecticut have received a great deal of attention, consequently, the outcome of our review in Ohio will be closely monitored,” Brunner said in September when SysTest Labs, Incorporated, and MicroSolved, Inc., were hired. “This process is one more step to assuring Ohio voters that our elections are safe, reliable and accurate.”

But given that California and Florida have tossed out the electronic voting machines and New York has not even tried them, as the Ohio Election Justice Campaign claims, the testing in Ohio must focus on the shortcomings that prompted the decisions by other states.

When she ran for office last year, Brunner pledged to restore voters’ trust in the elections process and work to improve the state’s image around the country.

Tarnished image

The image was tarnished by the myriad problems that surfaced during the 2004 presidential election as a result of missteps by then Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell’s office and local boards of elections.

Just about every postmortem of that election focused on what went wrong in Ohio.

Democrat Brunner, in her campaign for secretary of state, made it clear that her first priority would be to conduct a top-to-bottom review of elections processes and to launch an independent analysis of the voting system.

She has kept her word — as evidenced by her direct involvement in Cuyahoga County, where she demanded the resignation of all four board of elections members (two were Democrats), and her discussions with Republican legislative leaders about such persistent problems as poll-worker shortages.

Brunner has proposed legislation that would give her the authority to draft poll workers, but House Speaker Jon Husted isn’t buying. Thus, the state is approaching the crucial 2008 presidential election with the same reality that it has had to face for many years: poll workers who are up in years — the average age is 72 — and college students who aren’t willing to work 13 hours for a stipend of less than $100.

There’s a lot of work to be done between now and the March 2008 primary to ensure a problem-free election.

Secretary of State Brunner deserves bipartisan support on the state and local levels as she strives to restore public trust in Ohio’s elections system.