Voting machines would cost $8M
Montgomery County responds to letter from Ohio secretary of state.
Replacing the electronic touchscreen voting machines in Montgomery County would cost about $8 million, according to Steve Harsman, deputy director of the Montgomery County Board of Elections.
He was responding to the Dec. 14 letter Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted sent to Gov. John Kasich and legislative leaders calling on them to spend $118 million on new machines in every county.
The total price would be $200 million if all 88 counties purchased state-of-the-art electronic touch screen machines, said Harsman, who, along with County Commissioner Debbie Lieberman, sits on a state task force looking at the voting machine issue.
“We are in full support of the need to replace our aging voting equipment,” Harsman said. “We are hopeful the state legislature will include in the capital bill funding to help counties financially with the replacement cost.”
Husted based his $118 million estimate on the replacement cost of optical scan machines. But Harsman said electronic touch screen machines offer more advantages.
Currently about half the counties use optical scan equipment, including Clark, Champaign, Warren and Preble counties. The
other half use electronic touch screen machines with memory cards and a paper record of votes. Locally, Montgomery, Greene, Butler, Miami and Darke counties use electronic touch screen machines.
Under Husted’s plan, the counties would pay the difference if new touch screen machines cost more than the optical scan equipment.
Harsman said the county has been putting money aside for new voting machines for several years.
“We have approximately $1.2 million in our capital fund and hope to reach $2 million by the time we implement,” he said.
Husted, who is running for lieutenant governor on the 2018 ticket with Attorney General Mike DeWine, wants to see the equipment purchased next year so that there can be a test run in 2019 before the presidential election of 2020. Most of Ohio’s machines were purchased in 2005 and 2006.
“The last time Ohio replaced its voting machines, the iPhone hadn’t been released, people still rented movies from Blockbuster, and social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat didn’t exist,” Husted said in a Thursday news release. “It’s time to make updating our voting equipment a priority.”
The concern over aging voting technology ramped up during the 2016 election when hackers — believed to be from Russia — attempted to gain access to voting systems in multiple states.
Ohio election officials say they have systems in place to ensure the machines, ballots and memory cards are secure. U.S. law prohibits connecting voting machines and vote tabulation equipment to the internet.
When results are tablulated on election night in Ohio they are put on a thumb drive, provided by the secretary of state, that is then put into a dedicated computer to transmit the results to the state. That thumb drive is used just once to avoid contamination by any online bugs.
Backups of all results are kept by all the counties and the paper ballots and the electronic machines paper records are kept for a period of time until results have been verified and certified.