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Plain Dealer: "Job Well Done"
The Cleveland Plain Dealer
March 06, 2008
Election officials in Cuyahoga County made history on Tuesday. They conducted a major election with a new voting system - and they did it without a major complication.
Last Dec. 21, a mere 74 days before Ohio's presidential primary, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner ordered Cuyahoga County to scrap its touch-screen voting system and replace it with paper ballots counted by optical scanners. Given this county's nearly 40-year history of bungling the maiden voyages of voting systems, Brunner took a huge risk - a risk she acknowledged could impact her career.
Thanks largely to the efforts of a team headed by Elections Director Jane Platten and the four-member vote board, Brunner's gamble paid off.
There were minor glitches. But two factors that caused a slow vote count were beyond voting officials' control: A brutal ice storm slowed the arrival of ballots at the central counting location and a specious court action taken by the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama landed before a sympathetic judge who ordered that 20 precincts remain open an additional 90 minutes. A grand total of five people reportedly voted in those 90 minutes.
Although Tuesday's vote was a successful test run for the November presidential election, challenges remain.
If the money can be found to pay for the additional equipment, Cuyahoga County should switch to a precinct-based counting system. That would require significant changes in how the county conducts the Nov. 4 election. But for now, local election officials can congratulate themselves on a job well done.
