Switch to new voting system illegal, ACLU says

Cuyahoga County says results could be delayed hours with paper ballots
Friday, December 28, 2007 2:56 AM
By M.R. Kropko
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CLEVELAND -- The state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union yesterday urged the Cuyahoga County elections board to skip making a planned switch to a new voting system for the March 4 presidential primary, warning that doing so would violate state law.

Meanwhile, the county's elections director, Jane Platten, warned that the new tabulation system will mean final vote counts from the county may not be possible on election day. She did not say how long it might take.

Elections board member Rob Frost, Cuyahoga County's Republican chairman, said, "What I understand she is saying is that we might not have results at the earliest until the wee hours of the morning."

The board is moving to abandon electronic touch-screen voting for a system in which voters fill out paper ballots that are sent to and tallied at a central location by an optical-scan computer.

Centralized optical-scan tabulation "may be a slower method of tabulating votes," Frost said, but the elections board can't worry about that now.

"We've got to move on now. Time is short," he said.

Platten said the county is in initial discussions with a new voting vendor to replace its touch-screen system made by Diebold Inc.'s Premier Election Solutions. She is moving forward in making plans with Omaha, Neb.-based voting machines maker Election Systems & Software without a completed vendor contract.

More:

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2007/12/28/z-apoh_cuyahogaelection3_122.ART_ART_12-28-07_B5_P18TAEM.html?type=rss&cat=&sid=101

meaning, the election $$$s are not going to their buddies, and the election may have a paper trail, which could show that the Dems actually win the elections in landslides, not losing in "close" races with untraceable "electronic" counts ...

That is all ballots in the county counted in one location.

While it is more feasible for the ballots to be counted at the voting place. In addition I understand that the scanners can be used to validate the ballots as valid before the voter leaves. If not valid the voter can redo their ballot so it will be counted.

:sarcasm: