Elections board gets approval to reprint recount records

CLEVELAND (AP) — Ohio’s top elections official has given the Cuyahoga County elections board permission to reprint paper records of votes if the printouts made on Election Day are unreadable during a recount.

“The goal here is to ensure that every vote is counted,” said Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat who replaced the four-member board after she took office in January. The board, by law, has two Democrats and two Republicans.

Unreadable ballot printouts caused by paper jams marred two recounts at the board earlier this year, and elections officials worried about conducting a recount if too many ballot printouts are unreadable.

Brunner said board members would decide whether to reprint votes. They could reprint from memory cards, which record votes from inside touch-screen machines during elections, or from the machines’ internal flash memory.

The board asked Brunner for guidance because Ohio law doesn’t specify how to reproduce a touch-screen machine’s ballot printout, which resembles cash register tape and is visible to voters so they can make sure the machine recorded their votes correctly.

If the votes are printed out a second time for a recount, many voters won’t see their ballot printed, as they do on Election Day. But Brunner said that’s more acceptable than losing votes.

The board must recount four local races from the Nov. 6 election because the margin of victory was one-half of 1 percent or less.

The 2006 election in Cuyahoga County was marred by absent or poorly trained poll workers, lost vote-holding computer cards and a polling place that opened hours late.