"Reform" Comes to Ohio
Ohio's will likely be making substantial changes to its election laws. But is it really "reform"?

Reacting to the state's troubled 2004 election, the Ohio House of Representatives approved a bill (Sub HB 3) that would make sweeping changes to the administration of elections in the state, by a 70-27 vote. The version of the bill as passed by the House can be found here and the Cleveland Plain-Dealer has this story. Among the changes the bill would make is to define "jurisdiction" as "precinct" for purposes of provisional voting -- meaning that a provisional ballot cast out of precinct wouldn't be counted for any races, even the ones the voter was eligible to vote for. In addition, voters would have to cast provisional ballots if a postcard sent to them before the election is returned as undeliverable. The bill would also implement "no fraud" absentee voting. My testimony on the bill can be found here.

At the last minute, a provision was added to the bill requiring counties to cross-check electronic records against the paper records generated by the attached printers to be in place by 2006, in at least one county race. One of the big questions: If there's a discrepancy between the electronic and paper records, how do we know that the paper ones are more reliable?

In related news, the Athens News reports here on a "violent" disagreement among Democrats and Republicans over whether to adopt Diebold's electronic system or ES&S's precinct-count optical scan system. Lake County would like to test Diebold's electronic system with a contemporaneous paper record in July's election, according to this story in the Plain-Dealer. It wants to see how that system performs before deciding whether to buy it -- a prudent position in my view. The problem is that, with the May 2006 deadline for having new technology in place looming, counties are going to have to make their voting machine choices very soon to ensure a smooth transition. Still pending is ES&S's lawsuit, which I blogged on here and here to extend the deadline of May 24 (this Tuesday!) for counties to select a new voting system.

My take: Ohio's election reform bill is a mixed bag. Establishing a clear rule for provisional ballots is a good idea, though I don't think there's a good reason for refusing to count provisional ballots cast out of precinct, given that a statewide registration database (which should allow easy verification of eligibility) has to be in place by 2006. It would be much better to move to in-precinct early voting than mail-in absentee voting, but it seems that Ohio doesn't want to spend the money. On the voting machine front, the provision to require paper records to be counted is probably a good idea, though it's still an open question whether the contemporaneous paper record will prove to be an effective or workable means by which to promote integrity.

One thing that's certain is that this is a precarious time to be a county election administrator in Ohio. Any decision made on voting equipment entails considerable risk, and will undoubtedly be subject to lots of second-guessing if things don't work out perfectly. - posted by Dan Tokaji @ 12:11 PM