Drastic Measures May Be Only Option For Top Elections Official

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Without support from a skeptical legislature, Ohio's top elections official faces two drastic options to realize her quest of ridding the nation's seventh largest state of touch-screen voting machines by the November election.

Inaction from a legislature hamstrung by a projected budget deficit would force Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner into a sticky political position. She has only two unilateral options, both likely to cause an uproar - decertifying the machines without providing funding to replace them, or removing county elections board members who oppose her.

Brunner herself has said she is loath to be that aggressive in her effort to impose optical-scan voting systems on 57 Ohio counties using touch-screens. Elections officials in a majority of the counties have said they don't want the systems, in which a computer scanner reads paper ballots.

Both Brunner and the counties claim to have the allegiance of Ohio voters, who may again play a pivotal role in choosing the nation's next president in November.

In a survey conducted by Brunner, 71 percent of county election officials said they didn't have concerns after a report she commissioned found security problems with touch-screen machines. The report did not consider the probability that a breach would occur, or the preventive effects of basic polling-place security measures, they said.

Complaints about Brunner's proposal are flowing into the offices of state lawmakers, who found out this week that there will be, at best, a $733 million budget deficit by the end of June 2009, and at worst, a $1.9 billion gap. Brunner will ask them to divert state money into the estimated $30 million in election changes she wants.

"I haven't heard anyone (lawmakers) say they agree with the recommendations," said state Sen. John Carey, a Wellston Republican who reluctantly supported funding the voting machine study as a member of the state Controlling Board.

Brunner remains hopeful that a statewide solution can be worked out but also remains committed to having counties switch to an optical-scan system, said spokesman Jeff Ortega.