Counting votes on your fingers

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is proposing a novel way to ensure the integrity of elections – count ballots by hand.

Well, not all of them. What Brunner is wants, according to a story in the Columbus Dispatch, is for 11 counties to volunteer to do hand counts of 7 percent of the votes cast in each of those counties. These hand “audits” would presumably give the public confidence in the results spit out in the regular tabulations of Ohio’s assortment of paper ballots-optical scanners and touch-screen voting machines. At least it will give them confidence if the hand counts match those of the machines.

I applaud Brunner’s initiative, although I am not sure how she decided on 7 percent and 11 counties. Anything that would improve Ohio’s distressing election rumors of lost and miscounted votes would be welcomed. I do take issue with Brunner’s stated desire to do away with the touch-screens before the November election, however. She has said the machines make Ohio’s votes unreliable.

Statements like that from top officials help create the doubts she now wants to alleviate with the hand-count audits.