When Lucas County voters head to the polls in 2020, they will encounter a new fleet of high-tech voting machines. Voters should feel more confident casting ballots on the new system, but the Lucas County Board of Elections will have some more work to do before that is possible.
The new machines, which local officials will choose from an approved list of vendors in February, were mandated by outgoing Secretary of State Jon Husted and the Ohio General Assembly.
The state devoted nearly $105 million to help counties upgrade their voting machines. Lucas County expects to get almost $4 million of that. On top of the state money, the county will have to spend $7 million to $9 million more for the equipment.
That’s an investment in electoral security and is well worth the money.
The last time Lucas County bought new voting machines, in 2006, iPhones weren’t even on the market yet. Since then, of course, technology has advanced by leaps and bounds. Also since then the threat of digital election meddling and electoral-system hacking has emerged.
Local election officials have said that new voting machines unfortunately will not help Lucas County get any faster at tallying results on election night.
In last month’s general election, Lucas County was once again one of the slowest to post results on election night — 87th out of 88 counties, many of which are much smaller, with much fewer resources.
If new machines aren’t enough to improve that process, the officials should do whatever is necessary to do a better job finishing their work on election night. If they need more training, more experienced staffers, or a better system for transporting ballots to downtown Toledo, the elections board should make a priority of improving operations.
Democracy demands that voters have confidence in fair, accurate elections. This means secure voting machines and an efficient and well run local elections operation.
Who knows? If voters had more confidence in the integrity of elections, maybe Lucas County could get voter turnout better than 50 percent.
First Published December 18, 2018, 10:30 a.m.
