Cuyahoga BOE Deadlocked In Voting System Switch (OH)

[OhioChick]

POSTED: 4:35 pm EST December 20, 2007
UPDATED: 6:56 pm EST December 20, 2007

CLEVELAND -- The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections has deadlocked on whether to switch to a new voting system for the March primary, leaving the state's chief elections officer to break the 2-2 tie.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has been pressuring the board to scrap its $21 million touch-screen voting machines for an optical-scan system, following a report she released last week citing security flaws with the current system.

"I anticipate she will takes steps to order a new system," said elections board chairman Jeff Hastings, who voted against switching.

The vote fell along party lines with the two Republican board members voting against the measure and the two Democratic members backing what Brunner, a Democrat, asked the board to do.

The three-hour meeting grew heated before the vote with board member Robert Frost criticizing Brunner for not being present.

"That to me is shirking her responsibility," he said.

The vote came after about an hour of public testimony.

http://www.newsnet5.com/news/14900489/detail.html

[liberal N proud]

1. Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is against the electronic machines

[OzarkDem]

2. Good news

This means SOS Brunner makes the call, and she is calling for Cuy Co to get rid of the electronic machines. They're going to go to optical scanner machines.

The small election they had last November was a fiasco, it took them a week or more to finish tallying votes even in school board elections.

As always, the Plain Dealer (who takes its direction from the Bush WH) is trying valiantly to bully the BOE and Brunner into keeping them in this editorial two days ago. They're in full panic mode at not being able to rig the primary election, a sure indicator that the GOP plans to rig primary elections elsewhere..

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner must not change Cuyahoga County's voting system

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is on the brink of owning an election.

If it goes well, more power to the state's chief elections officer. If things go wrong, Brunner will get - and deserve - the lion's share of the blame.

That's because Brunner wants the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections to take a breathtakingly huge gamble with the March 4 presidential primary election.

...

We do not doubt Brunner's sincerity. But the time to change systems isn't 70 days before an election. If the touch-screen system continues to cause problems on March 4, the county would have eight months to transition to a new system.

Evaluating the future on March 5 makes sense. Playing Russian roulette with March 4 doesn't.

http://www.cleveland.com/editorials/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1198143230305810.xml&coll=2