DDN: Problems with county's voting system must be fixed

Posted by DarthDilbert at 11/10/2008 03:21:00 PM

Montgomery County has the dubious honor of being just one of four Ohio counties that Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner says missed the noon Wednesday deadline to report results. (The others were Franklin, Stark and Butler.)

Local officials and Brunner will have to sort out why and how Montgomery County got itself in this spot. Brunner says she won't sanction the county, but she believes that the county's electronic machines aren't good enough, nor is its system for counting paper ballots. The county officials say we have a good system, and Brunner's mandate of the paper ballot alternative caused unavoidable counting delays.

Here's an idea: let's not have people working the polls whose average age is 85 years old. As I wrote on election day, the problem at my precinct had nothing to do with the ballots themselves, but with the fact that a circuit had been tripped and that it took them over an hour to figure this out. Besides the deficiency in electrical troubleshooting skills, the ability to comprehend the alphabet was also a hindrance. After giving my last name she began to look not in the section for my last name but in the opposite end of the book. She then turned to that section, looked up and smiled asking my name again. When I corrected her the presiding judge sitting next to her shook his head and reached over to assist her with her duties in finding my name. After all the attention focused on ACORN and their fraudulent voter registration the talking heads assured the public that there was a stark difference between the fraud found in registration, and actually voting. With what I saw first-hand, I'm surprised if Mickey Mouse and the starting lineup for the Dallas Cowboys didn't vote with the rest of us there.

I don't see the system itself as what needs to be fixed, but the people working within it. Basic skills of observation and paying attention should be paramount followed by the ability to troubleshoot an issue. Once I had a working card, I was able to vote in a matter of a few minutes, but getting to that point was the problem, compounded by the inadequacies I've pointed out here.

Dayton Daily News