Brunner plans to test voting equipment

WARREN — Ohio’s secretary of state plans to spend nearly $1.8 million to test Ohio’s various types of voting equipment this fall, as well as improve other aspects of the state’s voting system.

These measures are meant to ensure that when the presidential primary of March 2008 comes, the state can be sure that it is providing the rest of the nation with reliable voting results, Jennifer Brunner said Wednesday.

“Ohio should be pivotal again,” Brunner, a Democrat, said of the next presidential election.

In the 2004 election, questions were raised about whether some minority voters in Ohio were kept from voting because of moves made by then-secretary of state Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican. Questions have also been raised about whether the electronic voting equipment used in most Ohio counties is safe from manipulation and hacking.

Brunner, who was making a stop at the Trumbull County Board of Elections as part of a plan to visit all 88 elections boards, said uniform poll worker training throughout the state is also among her priorities.

Measures such as these will hopefully eliminate long lines found at some polls during the last presidential election, she said.

On another topic, Brunner said she hopes the Ohio Legislature will pass a new law to help candidates for local political office who were ruled ineligible to run as independents in the fall election, because they voted in the primary as either a Democrat or Republican.

An advisory from Brunner’s office led to the disqualification of several candidates in Trumbull and Mahoning counties and a lawsuit in the 11th District Court of Appeals seeking a reversal of their disqualification.

Brunner said she didn’t like giving the advisory but didn’t have a choice. She was following the law as handed down by a federal appeals court, she said.

Brunner said she wishes an exception could have been made for candidates ruled ineligible this year because they were not properly advised by local and state elections officials until after they had voted in the primary.

Brunner said her office learned of the federal appeals court ruling too late to help the candidates because of the change from the Blackwell administration to hers.