And the Ohio story continues…

Ohio Officials at Odds over Paper Ballot

The story continues to unfold in Ohio.  In an effort to provide an alternative to the touch screen voting system, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner moved to have paper ballots as an additional option.  Not only would it provide a paper method for voters not confident in the electronic machine, but also would alleviate long lines as they expect high voter turnout.  Other county officials, however, have recently been awarded a retraining order against moving forward with this plan since it could cost certain counties as much as $68,000 to put in place.  After such chaos and crisis of recent events, though, how could any county official not feel that this money is a necessity?  What is the price of voter confidence?  Is it worth $68,000 for a county to provide an accurate voting process?  It still baffles me that some in Ohio still believe in the digital systems.

All of these articles about the election process continue to bring me back to the issue of consistency across counties, states, and the nation.  It just seems backwards that we have a nation that insists on not working together to solve the problems of the collective voting process.  There is such a thing as compromise.  The states need not lose their independence simply by combining efforts for election reform.