ACLU: Ohio Voting Switch May Be Illegal

Thursday, December 27, 2007 6:00 PM

CLEVELAND -- The American Civil Liberties Union urged the elections board in the state's most populous county on Thursday not to make a switch to a new voting system for the state's March presidential primary, warning that the move could violate state law.

The Cuyahoga County 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.

ACLU staff attorney Carrie Davis said a lawsuit was possible over the issue. The group raised its concerns in a letter delivered to the board.

The main dispute is whether a central optical scan of ballots at the board's headquarters downtown would result in votes not being counted on ballots that are incorrectly filled out. The ACLU believes the intent of election law is to ensure voters can be notified immediately of a voting error and be able to make a second-chance vote.

Patrick Gallaway, a spokesman in Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner's office, said it's possible for precinct-based scanners to be used in Cuyahoga County to scan ballots or voters to determine if they contain any errors.

Many voting problems were reported in Ohio in the 2004 race between President Bush, a Republican, and Democrat John Kerry, including the accuracy of vote totals in precincts using electronic machines. Kerry conceded the election after narrowly losing Ohio's 20 electoral votes.

http://www.newsmax.com/us/ohio_voting_m ... 60127.html