But in seven counties, voters will cast ballots the same way they have for years: on equipment and systems that date to before President Barack Obama's first term.
Since state elections officials don't want voters to encounter a major change in a presidential election year, Summit, Stark, Cuyahoga, Lake, Geauga, Columbiana and Morrow counties are prohibited from rolling out new equipment during the 2020 election cycle. They now must wait until after next year's general election to tap into about $115 million the state provided for equipment upgrades.
Beyond 2020, Summit County will acquire new machines that won't be much different from its tried-and-true models in use today.
"They need to be replaced eventually," said Bill Rich, a Democrat who chairs the Summit County Board of Elections. "But so far they certainly haven't shown any signs of malfunctioning. I'm confident they'll get us through the 2020 elections."
"I have great confidence, as should the voters of Summit County, in our machines," echoed the election board's Executive Director Joe Masich, a Republican. "They are older, but they're working accurately."
The county moved from problematic punch cards to optically scanned ballots, as everyone in Ohio did, in the mid to late 2000s. Voters may remember the role of punch cards and their hanging chads in the controversial recount of the 2000 presidential election in Florida.
Since moving to paper ballots filled in by voters and fed through scanners, Summit County has reported no significant irregularities. An audit ordered on the 2019 elections, as well as numerous recounts in the past few elections, have reproduced voter counts nearly identical to what was reported on or shortly after Election Day.
"Our tabulation system is working just fine," said Masich, who reiterated that the county voting machines are not connected to the Internet, which eliminates the chance of being hacked remotely.
Masich said the board will likely pick a vendor this summer for the new machines. There's bipartisan consensus that the new machines should retain the use of paper ballots.
"Paper ballots are the way to go," Rich said, giving credit to Republicans for leading the push for paper ballots years earlier. "It's the only way that you can have a ballot that a human being can read and verify."
With $4.6 million in state funding to buy new machines, officials are also replacing current models with extra units on hand, waiting as long as possible to save taxpayers as much money as possible, Rich and Masich said.
The new machines, along with maintaining paper ballots, could expedite election night reporting. For example, electronic images would be captured of individual ballots fed into scanners, Rich said. In tight races, officials would be able to call up write-in ballots to more accurately report outcomes, instead of waiting days to find and tabulate unique votes by hand.
Voting hodgepodge
Summit is one of 49 counties in which voters fill in bubbles on pre-printed paper ballots that are fed into scanners. The remaining counties use touch-screen or hybrid systems, in which paper ballots are marked on a machine and fed into a scanner.
All of Ohio's elections have a paper backup.
"The fact that we have different kinds of voting machines in different counties in some ways can be a strength, because if there were some kind of flaw or vulnerability with one type of machine, it wouldn't necessarily affect elections statewide," LaRose said.
LaRose and elections officials around the state said that Ohio's elections are secure, even though local boards are allowed to select their own method of voting and equipment from a list of those vetted by the state and federal governments.
Elections officials are facing greater scrutiny over those systems in a post-2016 world, where meddling in U.S. elections by foreign adversaries is a daily topic of conversation in newspapers and on cable news and social media.
LaRose's office said an attempted hack of its website on Election Day 2019 originated in Panama from the Russian-owned OKPay Investment Co. The attack was unsuccessful and detected by a digital burglar alarm that is being rolled out to all 88 counties by the end of January, LaRose said.
Ohio law prohibits elections equipment from being connected to the internet, and LaRose has said any attempt to hack into it and alter vote totals would require opening the machine to access its hardware.
LaRose also directed boards in 2019 to conduct post-election audits, which will be required for future elections under a bill the General Assembly passed late last year. The secretary wants more boards to adopt "risk-limiting audits," which require examining more ballots in closer elections.
Stark County began using its touch-screen system in 2005, but it replaced machines in 2013 after a roof collapse at the board of elections. The county was "more comfortable" using its existing equipment for the busy 2020 election, said Bill James, an information technology specialist with the board of elections.
©2020 the Akron Beacon Journal (Akron, Ohio) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
