Blackwell to Deploy Uniform Statewide Voting System

[papau]

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/news/index1.htm

Blackwell to Deploy Uniform Statewide Voting System
Wednesday, January 12, 2005


County Commissioners Association Supports Blackwell Plan To Use Optical Scan Machines

COLUMBUS – Citing reliability, flexibility and exceptional value, Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell today announced that paper-based precinct count optical scan voting devices will be offered to county boards of elections as the state’s primary voting system. Deployment of the devices, which are compliant with the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), will provide Ohioans with a uniform statewide voting system for future elections.

“Precinct count optical scan voting devices will allow more citizens to vote in an expedited manner while providing accurate, dependable, and paper auditable results,” Blackwell said. “We have a tight election reform deployment schedule, too few allocated federal and state dollars and not one electronic voting device certified under Ohio’s standards and rules. Precinct count technology just makes sense considering the flexibility it provides to financially constrained counties.”

The County Commissioners Association of Ohio believes the use of optical scan voting devices is the only prudent and fiscally responsible way for election reform to continue in Ohio.

“County Commissioners are having a difficult time balancing budgets at the local level. Given the limited federal and state dollars that are available to meet the requirements of the Help America Vote Act, it appears that the proposal to use optical scan voting is the only way Ohio can comply with federal law without counties being required to pay for part of the cost for installing new voting devices,” said Larry Long, Executive Director of the County Commissioners Association of Ohio.<snip>

[Skink]

1. I like the exceptional value..

What we need is the least expensive voting machines for this country.

[merwin]

3. More fraud for you money

[gennifer6]

2. He waits until NOW to say this, AFTER he "delivered" Ohio to *

what an *ss, he's trying to clean up his reputation so he has a chance at getting real votes in his campaign for Governor of Ohio.... I'm sure he'll find anothre way to steal it

[Skink]

4. Blackwell need's a lesson in hacking...

let's show him how it is done during the Governor's race.

[Liberty Belle]

5. optical scans--like the ones in Florida that gained notoriety?

Remember, all the counties with optical scanners had flopped exit polls, leading to suspicions that they'd been hacked.

Are these by Diebold? Here in San Diego, 33% of Diebold optical scanners failed on election day.

[eridani]

6. This could work if two issues were dealt with--

--one being getting rid of secret software for vote tabulation and the other implementing proper procedure for chain of custody of the tabulation tapes. No modems either, it should go without saying.

The scanned ballot is quite a good front end, as it reduces crowding. With any other kind of machine, you have to wait for the person in front of you to finish. I worked in an optical scan voting site in a school library, and when the privacy carrels were full, people just wandered off into the stacks to find reasonably private flat surfaces.