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Tax Dollars at Work: Richland County Edition
- Filed under: Arshinkoff / Coughlin, Ohio Government
- Date: Mar 10,2008
Mansfield - The 7,000 paper ballots that elections officials were required to provide Tuesday at Richland County polling places worked out to an average cost, for the number of voters who actually used them, of about $320. Deputy Elections Director Jeff Wilkinson said only 11 voters requested paper ballots as an alternative to touchscreen voting. At least 37,300 voters cast ballots here in the primary — not counting provisional or overseas ballots to be added later.
Doing the math, 11 voters out of 37,300 comes out to be 0.000297%. At a cost of about 50 cents each, just about $3,500 of ballots went unused. It really isn't a huge deal when you think of all the examples of wasted tax money out there (Bridge to Nowhere comes to mind at the federal level), but it illustrates the extra expense Brunner is going to in order to complete her goal of making the tin foil crowd feel their vote counts - even though there are just as many, if not more, potential problems with the paper ballots/ optical scanners. If someone is going to cheat, paper ballots aren't going to stop them. Nothing was wrong with the touch screens that Ohio has used in previous elections.
More: Local elections officials were surprised by the low number of paper ballots requested, Hankins said. They had anticipated requests from voters who resist using the relatively new touch screen system and from others who don't totally trust computers. I guess most people in Richland County don't believe the conspiracy theories about the Ohio voting system and they don't have politicians running around telling them to doubt their system. One thing I don't get is the "paper receipt" demand for touch screens. If the computer is going to just determine who it wants to win, wouldn't it just print out a fake receipt?
The way Ohio's county elections boards are set up - two Republicans and two Democrats in each county - is also a deterrent to vote fraud, as in theory the parties want opposite candidates to win (does not pertain to Cuyahoga County Republicans). If you run an election right, as the people in charge down in Richland County seem to have done, touch screens work fine. The problems only seem to be when the candidate you are backing loses. Like John Kerry.
Also in the news: Columbus Dispatch picks up on Arshinkoff-Coughlin.
13 Responses for "Tax Dollars at Work: Richland County Edition"
My normal rant. We are speneding an ever growing amount of money because the court decided that the traditional punch paper ballots were disinfranchising people. Why were they being so? Because they either couldnt or wouldnt take the time to do it correctly and check their ballot. You cannot create a sytstme that prevents human error or incompetence. What a waste of money.
I'd rather have too many ballots than the shortages they ran into in Cuyahoga County and Sandusky County.
Kyle,
Was the shortage of ballots ever proven? On CNN election night they said they eventually closed the polls 6 minutes early (to the extended time so 8:54) because there was no evidence that there was a shortage of ballots. I never heard anything more about it because I stopped watching the television and started watching the live blogging on politics.ohio.com
They would never run out if people used touch screens.
Hollywood, to my knowledge the reports of ballot shortages were true. I just searched to find a story contradicting the claims and didn't find any. Sorry I can't be of more help on that question.
angryconserv: The problem was that persons with disabilities were being disenfranchised — not necessarily lazy voters as you imply. This group is actually a fairly large minority, and includes the elderly who just may not have the dexterity that they used to have in order to use the hardware. The system should be as accessible to these folks as possible to allow a vast majority of them to vote independently.
Touch screens are problematic due to queuing problems. Tables are cheap, so getting many more tables than you need is easy, but touch screens are not, and you can develop a bit of a line. Registration/signin also creates a queuing problem if set up improperly.
Ballot shortages are just sloppy work. Every shipment should include a note that says "if you see this note, call this number IMMEDIATELY", and it should be located 50-75% of the way through the stack/ballot store. That number should send someone with or give a pollworker directions to pick up more ballots. Cost of ballots is usually between 10-30 cents. It could be a lot cheaper if a group of cheaper printers were used to create the ballots (5-10 $100 epsons can print about as fast as a $500,000 indigo printer).
Regarding security, I'd suggest everyone look up Punchscan or Scantegrity. Both are optical scan systems that give voters confirmation numbers so that they can check their ballots were counted. Most importantly, if you are willing to learn, you can download all the confirmation numbers along with various other data and use them to verify the final results without knowing how anyone voted.
Mail in balloting would lead to more fraud than anything.
I've had the pleasure of reading this column from the inception. Thought I would drop a comment on here to tell you to keep the insightful columns up! Thanks again!!
Until reading your articles I've always considered myself a true Democrat. However, your arguments have swayed me to what every american should be…..a good ol Republican. Keep up the good work!
Rick,
I belive the courts ruling focused on the fact that app. 5% of the voters ballots were thrown out becaues they double voted( voted for more than one person in same race). As far
as the elderly I spent way to much time watching the Fla. chad fiasco and those that took their time and checked their ballot stated they didnt have a problem.
I found this interesting….in an ironic sort of way…
"I guess most people in Richland County don't believe the conspiracy theories about the Ohio voting system and they don't have politicians running around telling them to doubt their system."
Would Keeler's take be the same about politicians running around the nation demanding new Voter ID laws to prevent fraudulent voting. When there's no evidence ANYWHERE that voter fraud even exists?
Is it only a conspiracy theory when Democrats are doing the theorizing?
It's so hard to keep up with the double standards.
The issue is expectations: what do we expect? What level of imperfection, if any, is acceptable? Until we even agree that SOME level of imperfection is inevitable, we will continue to do everything we think is necessary to safeguard the right to vote. Frankly, given the hit that people's confidence in the system has taken over the last decade or so, a few pennies per U.S. capita is worth it. We ended up with Bush as our president for eight years and look what that's done to our reputation overseas. Can't we please be okay with trying to uphold the reputation of SOMETHING?
Rev,
You are talking about two different issues. I am talking about left wing lunatics thinking their votes are being stolen or not counted. They are being counted.
When people commit vote fraud, but registering fake voters, voting twice, signing up dead people etc, that is something that should be stopped. An ID can stop that.
The issues are totally seperate from one another and I think you are well aware of that. It isnt a double standard at all.
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