It’s All on Brunner’s Hands Now
From the PD Editorial
The 11th-hour change in voting systems was ordered last week by Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. Her decision came after the four-member county board deadlocked 2-2 on replacing the controversial and problem-plagued touch-screen system.
After ordering the dramatic and costly ($9 million) change, Brunner said, “I know Cuyahoga County is doing the right thing.”
We’ll assume this was merely a poor choice of words, because neither the Board of Elections nor anyone else in Cuyahoga County made this decision. Brunner made it - unilaterally.
The success or failure of what happens on March 4 in Cuyahoga County will be almost entirely Brunner’s doing. With her career and reputation on the line, it would behoove the state’s top election official to provide Cuyahoga County with as much assistance as possible in the weeks ahead.
History tells us that every time Cuyahoga County changes voting systems, Election Day chaos follows. As the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio warned Brunner last week, the decision “to switch technologies before the March primary could have disastrous effects.”
Earlier this year, Brunner fired all four Board of Elections members, appointed the four current members and placed the county’s entire elections operation under her administrative oversight. Now she has ordered the county to implement a huge change in election systems in less than six weeks.
If successful, Brunner will have justified the faith voters placed in her when they elected her to the job a year ago. If not . . .
Brunner’s bought the ranch (of untrustworthy, hair-trigger malfunctioning optical scanners, that is) now. Stubborn, self-righteous and politically paranoid is no way to go through life or to be a state’s chief elections officer. Typical of her strategy to be perceived doing the right thing but rigging things behind the scenes to insulate her from negative fallout from her single-mindedness, she boxed out from participating in her EVEREST study really well-respected legal professionals who have studied elections and voting matters far more than she has and said many of her recommendations don’t reflect the evidence she included in her report. Even more disconcerting, when people who supported her as a white knight for voting in Ohio are now questioning that support, she should emerge from her chamber of solitude and realize that her ramming-speed decisions are only chipping away at her former base of support. Her dogged pursuit of radial changes that may actually lead to more problems that go against the grain of key components of her campaign will only redefine her as no less partisan than the guy she replaced. She said that if she did her job right, nobody would know her name in the same way people know the names of Ken Blackwell in Ohio in 2004 or Katherine Harris in Florida in 2000. Hell, the 2008 elections aren’t even here yet and she’s already behind the eight ball on that resolution.