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Cuyahoga official at ease ahead of November vote
CLEVELAND -- For the often embattled elections director in Cuyahoga County, the coming presidential election is like a hurricane on the horizon.
Four years after voters in Ohio's most populous county drew national attention when they were forced to wait for hours in line to cast their ballots, Jane Platten is planning, preparing and staying calm.
Cuyahoga, a Democratic stronghold where turnout is vital to Barack Obama's chances in battleground Ohio, has had a number of voting problems since the 2004 election. On Nov. 4, Platten will be overseeing a transition to optical scanning of paper ballots inside polling places for the first time in the county's history.
It's the county's third voting system since 2006. Earlier this year, Platten oversaw the switch to paper ballots for the March 4 primary, when the county rented 15 high-speed scanners and counted paper ballots at a central location.
In November, the county will have some 1,500 scanners inside voting precincts. Platten anticipates 700,00 to 750,000 ballots will be cast in Cuyahoga, with activity at 568 polling locations reflecting voters' heightened interest in the presidential contest.
About 687,000 county residents voted in 2004, when President Bush clinched his return to the White House with a victory over Democrat John Kerry in Ohio.
"Even if there's a moment, God forbid, of crisis on Election Day, I'm ready to handle that attention," said the soft-spoken Platten, who studied English and French literature at John Carroll University in suburban Cleveland.
She said she never dreamed she'd one day be running elections in Ohio's most populated county. But Platten, who served as spokeswoman for the county elections board in 2004 and took over as elections chief in June 2007, knows the pressures and expectations.
"Do I think about it even when I'm in my backyard gardening or hanging out? Absolutely! As much as I do that, there will always be something that no one in this business can project," she said on Thursday. "Something will happen, and we'll have to deal with some particular issue, problem or trouble spot. You make decisions, react and fix it."
Platten's main goal is to persuade voters in Cuyahoga, which includes Cleveland and its suburbs, to vote absentee through the mail or at early election sites without having to give any reason. She's hoping that about 300,000 votes will be made that way, easing lines at the polls.
Now ancient history is a May 2006 switch to electronic voting marred by poll workers who were unprepared to operate the machines, some poll workers who didn't show up for work and vote-holding memory cards that were misplaced or lost.
Last November, Platten had to deal with server glitches in an e-voting system that delayed final results until noon the next day.
At the urging of Ohio's secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner, the $21 million Premier Election Solutions system was set aside early this year, a decision that has required election officials to work quickly to implement the change to paper ballots.
Making that switch that fast was a monumental task, said Candice Hoke, a law professor at Cleveland State University and director of its Center for Election Integrity.
"There will likely be some problems, because any presidential election has a huge turnout," Hoke said. "But at least they are not denying problems now. They are anticipating, planning for them and trying to make sure any kind of difficulty is minimized."
Cuyahoga's switch to paper ballots may seem like a step backward into a less technologically evolved era. E-voting was supposed to make things simpler, quicker and more accurate.
But Brunner ordered the county to make the switch from electronic touch-screen machines because she considers the optical-scan machines to be more secure. A review by corporate and academic scientists last year identified a host of ways in which votes cast on touch-screen technology are vulnerable to manipulation.
Platten, 40, said she's been contacted by other elections directors across nation for guidance on making the switch to paper.
"The poll workers still have to deal with a scanner, but it's so much easier than what we had out there," she said. "Although we will use memory cards to upload results, we always have that paper ballot to go back to if we have an issue."
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On the Net:
Cuyahoga County Board of Elections: http://boe.cuyahogacounty.us/
