Secretary of State visits Cuyahoga Elections Board

Thursday, January 3, 2008
Topics: Politics
Download  RSS  Short URL  Share

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner visited the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections Wednesday, a week after spearheading a major change in the county's voting procedures. ideastream Politics reporter Kymberli Hagelberg has more.

With all its voting troubles, it’s sometimes tough not to see Cuyahoga County as the center of the voting universe. That holds true even for Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, who said she’s responsible if the change to optical scan machines for the March 4 primary goes awry. But on primary night, Brunner won’t be in Cleveland.

Brunner: “Generally, I am required to be in Columbus, because there are 88 counties. Sometimes, it doesn’t seem like it.”

Brunner defended her directive last month to scrap the county’s $21 million touch screen voting system in favor of paper ballots counted with high-speed optical scanners.

She said the change was preferably in the primary rather than in November, when the vote turnout could be 45 percent.

Bite:"Clearly what we saw in November with a 15 percent turnout is a system that failed. It’s taken the manufacturer many many tests and tries to understand why it failed.”

Brunner’s decision broke a stalemate among board members over the issue.
The secretary of state’s office won’t pay for the change to optical scan, which should run 3 million in equipment and 2 million in annual upkeep, but Brunner said she’ll ask the legislature to reimburse the county.

Kymberli Hagelberg, 90.3