Jennifer Brunner - Ohio Secretary of State

A Successful Election

The Toledo Blade
March 08, 2008

RETURNS from Tuesday's primary election in Ohio have been tabulated and the results show that - acts of God aside - Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner's experiment with paper ballots was a success. This is not to suggest the process was spotless. No election would be complete without a blemish or two but this one had, thankfully, fewer than expected. The polls were kept open until 9 p.m. in Sandusky County after election officials ran short of paper ballots after a precautionary device - a ballot-on-demand printer - failed. A handful of Sylvania Township voters were mistakenly given ballots intended for 17-year-olds and therefore didn't get to make their voices heard on ballot issues. And in 10 southern Ohio counties, flooding resulting from heavy rain forced many voters to cast provisional ballots at boards of election instead of their usual polling places. Also, since it seems no election is complete without some technical glitch, 15 memory cards containing results from two West Toledo polling stations were misplaced for several hours and a 16th card was locked in a polling place until Wednesday morning, resulting in vote totals not being sent to the secretary of state until about 11:45 a.m. on Wednesday. But it was in Cuyahoga County, where Ms. Brunner ordered that touch-screen machines be replaced by paper ballots read by optical-scan readers, that the paper-based system proved its worth. Yes, the polls had to kept open an extra 90 minutes in 21 precincts there because of ballot shortages. And, yes, some polling sites had to be reopened because the order to extend hours didn't come until after their 7:30 p.m. closing time. But the shortage resulted from the combination of a record turnout and a large number of Republicans and independents deciding to vote in the Democratic primary, not from any inherent problem with paper ballots. Considering that Ms. Brunner only ordered the change in January, Tuesday's vote in Ohio's most populous (and at times most electorally dysfunctional) county was remarkably smooth. Kevin DeWine, state deputy Republican chairman, who appears more interested in scoring points against Democrats than he is in improving the elections process, complained that the vote count in Cuyahoga County was not completed until 6 a.m. on Wednesday, but that was still several hours before results were filed from Lucas County, where touch-screen machines were used. And in the final analysis, late results aren't a failure, just an inconvenience to those of us in the news media. Politics aside, the inescapable conclusion is that the Ohio primary was a success. No votes were reported lost, natural disasters were overcome, and technical problems were identified and dealt with in a timely manner. We agree with House Speaker Jon Husted (R., Kettering), who noted that "every [voting] system has its shortcomings." But we believe that the minimal drawbacks of paper ballots are outweighed by the advantage of a voting method that is both less subject to malfunctions and more secure than touch-screen devices. Ms. Brunner has proven that the change to paper ballots can be accomplished in Lucas and 55 other counties where touch-screen devices currently are used, before the general election. Switching won't be easy or cheap. Recent estimates place a price tag of $64 million on the transition. But we urge state lawmakers to make this necessary investment in free and fair elections before Ohioans go to the polls on Nov. 4.


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November 20, 2008 - 05:00 PM Reception in Toledo, Ohio
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