Paper: Many want paper ballots

Union County sued over the paper-ballot mandate.

COLUMBUS (AP) — A large portion of voters say they would prefer a paper ballot for the presidential primary, raising the question of whether some polling sites might run out of those ballots, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

As part of her efforts to overhaul Ohio’s election systems, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has ordered that the 56 Ohio counties using touch-screen voting machines make paper ballots available to people who want them. She said counties must print enough of the ballots for 10 percent of the people who voted in the last presidential election.

One county has decided to take Brunner to court over her paper-ballot mandate. Union County filed suit in county court Tuesday in what is the most aggressive action taken to date against Brunner’s efforts.

A recent poll by The Columbus Dispatch found that 54 percent of Ohio’s Democratic voters and 38 percent of Republicans would prefer to vote on the paper ballots, which are marked by voters then tabulated by a scanning machine.

High turnout is expected on March 4 now that Ohio’s primary could prove vital in selecting the presidential nominees. Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are locked in a battle for delegates that likely will extend beyond Tuesday’s voting in more than 20 states, while the Republican nomination also may be unsettled.

Counties are asking for trouble if they only provide the number of paper ballots that Brunner ordered, said Keith Cunningham, director of the Allen County Board of Elections in northwest Ohio. Trying the system out in a presidential primary was unwise, he said.

“I think 10 percent is woefully low,” he said. “That’s a real high-risk situation.”

Brunner said counties can decide how many ballots to print and can make unused absentee ballots available if a shortage seems likely.

“I think the election officials feel pretty satisfied that they’ll be in a position to handle that if there is an excess number of people who request a ballot,” Brunner said.

Complicating the paper ballot issue, counties must produce various versions of ballots to reflect different races for posts such as school board or Congress.

Union and other counties have balked at the paper ballot requirement, saying it was akin to forcing them to change their voting system. But Brunner said counties already use a ballot scanning system for absentee and provisional ballots, so her paper-ballot directive did not require a new voting system.

Union County’s board reached a tie vote on complying with the paper ballot directive. Brunner told the board in a letter Tuesday that she was breaking the tie vote and forcing it to comply with the directive, and the county filed the lawsuit to counter her.

“We know that she has the authority to issue directives,” said Brunner spokesman Patrick Gallaway. “This is not changing their type of voting system.”

The Hardin County Board of Elections voted against complying with Brunner’s directive, but reversed that vote after receiving a letter from Brunner outlining her authority in issuing the directive.

Brunner was also forced to break a tie vote on Cuyahoga County’s elections board, which deadlocked on a host of issues in a Brunner directive, including switching out the county’s touch-screen machines for a paper ballot scanning system in time for the March primary.

Cuyahoga officials decided last weekend to fire the company that printed ballots for the scanning system after the scanner could not read the ballots in multiple tests.