Cuyahoga Co. switching to paper ballots

The outcome of the close race between Democratic rivals could hinge on Cuyahoga County.

CLEVELAND (AP) — The state’s most populous county, heavily Democratic Cuyahoga, will use a new voting system in Ohio’s presidential primary, potentially pushing the ballot counting beyond election day.

Ohio’s voting systems across 88 counties for March 4 are a mix of touch-screen electronic voting and central or precinct-based optical scan of paper ballots.

Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, has a history of election struggles such as computer server failures, poll worker problems and delays in counting ballots. This year the county is hurriedly switching from touch-screen voting in place since 2006 to paper ballots at the urging of Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat.

With approximately 1 million voter registrations in the county and a population of about 1.3 million, a close race between Democratic rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama could come down to the vote there. Ohio was crucial in President Bush’s re-election in 2004.

Elsewhere in Ohio, some opposition exists to Brunner’s preference to have paper ballots on hand for voters who request them.

Brunner wants 53 Ohio counties that still use electronic, touch-screen voting machines to make paper ballots available to voters asking for them. She said counties must print enough of the ballots for 10 percent of the people who voted in the last presidential primary election.

“Fairly or not, I think Ohio’s under a big microscope,” said Lawrence Norden, project director of the Voting Technology Assessment Project at the New York University School of Law.

Brunner would like the touch-screen counties to change to paper ballots by November’s general election — at an estimated cost of $31 million — based on a $1.9 million study her office authorized. That study concluded that touch-screen voting can be manipulated and that voting with paper ballots is more reliable.

Some election officials have asked Brunner to slow down in her efforts to switch away from touch-screens. Union County took her to court over the issue.

Only Cuyahoga and the much smaller Van Wert and Mercer counties on Ohio’s western edge will count votes at a central location in the primary. The optical scan system has been criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union and others for not allowing a voter a second chance if a machine rejects a ballot.

Most counties in Ohio and nationally that use an optical scan system have scanners to tally votes in precincts, where poll workers can identify if there is a problem with a ballot.

Putnam County recently switched from touch-screen to paper ballots with precinct-based optical scanning.

Cuyahoga County has warned that primary election vote tabulation could go well into the next day because of the new system and the time that may be needed to transport ballots, organize them and run them through scanners. Ballots will be transported to a location holding 15 high-speed optical scanners supplied by Omaha, Neb.-based vendor Election Systems & Software.

“I think we have hit all of our benchmarks successfully up to this point,” said Jane Platten, the county’s elections director. “I’m hesitant to make a prediction on the timing it will take to scan all the ballots.”

The county is expecting a voter turnout of more than 30 percent, comparable to the 34 percent turnout in the 2004 presidential primary.

Instructional brochures and postcards are being sent to voters, advising them to expect paper ballots and explaining how to use them, such as the need to mark ballots accurately. Instructions will be posted at polling places and inside voting booths.

Brunner said voters will like the switch.

“I don’t really think it will be a foreign experience for voters, and for the poll workers this is going to greatly simplify the process,” she said.

Another issue is how the county’s central, high-speed optical scanners are calibrated, meaning how closely they look for ballot marks.

Candice Hoke, director of the Center for Election Integrity at Cleveland State University, said highly calibrated scanners might not count votes on a ballot with faint markings or unusual marks outside of an oval.

So there may be a call to examine ballots cast out by optical scanners so that human eyes can determine voter intent, Hoke said.

Ravenna City Councilman Bruce Ribelin, a northeast Ohio Democrat, said some problems could be avoided if voters double check their ballots.

“If there are problems with the election, a lot of times I think it’s with the people who go vote,” he said.

Jim Westfall, GOP chairman in Union County, said he understands why voters might be confused about whether touch-screen is the best way to vote.

“When one political entity is saying it’s bad and the other is saying it’s good, what’s the voter going to think?” he said.