FIVE Months Later - Ohio Admits having Some Voting Problems

Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell announced yesterday he is removing the entire Lucas County board of elections because of problems stemming from the November election, but all four board members said they are not quite ready to budge. The action by Mr. Blackwell, a Republican, comes on the heels of an investigation conducted by aides Richard Weghorst, the state director of campaign finance, and Faith Lyon, liaison to county boards of elections. "Mr. Weghorst and Ms. Lyons conducted an extensive review and investigation of the Lucas County board of elections," said Blackwell spokesman Carlo LoParo. "Based on their investigation, they recommended that Secretary Blackwell begin removal proceedings of all four board members. Secretary Blackwell has agreed, and accepted their recommendations to begin removal proceedings." "It is the investigators' determination that the members of the Lucas County board of elections, at the time of the November, 2004, election, were directly responsible for the inefficient and unorganized management of the election process in their county," the report said. It cited 13 areas of "grave concern," including:

• Failure to maintain ballot security.
  
• Inability to implement and maintain a trackable system for voter ballot reconciliation.
  
• Failure to prepare and develop a plan for the processing of the voluminous amount of voter registration forms received.
  
• Issuance and acceptance of incorrect absentee ballot forms.
  
• Failure to maintain the security of poll books during the official canvass.
  
• Among other things, the report states that some optical scan ballots received from a private printing company in Dayton sat unattended in an unsecured warehouse for nearly a month before the presidential election. It states that Democrat Paula Hicks-Hudson, the elections director who quit in January, and Republican Jill Kelly, the deputy director, were "aware that the overflow [ballots were] being stored in an unsecured location on the third floor" of the county warehouse on Berdan Avenue. The ballots are supposed to be locked in a secure location under double lock-and-key, with the Republicans in control of one key and Democrats the other. Some were, but those that could not fit in the ballot room at the elections office were shipped to the county warehouse for storage until the election. "Ballots must be secured at all times by a board of elections," the report declared. [more] and [more]