OhioCounties.net

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Early next year, Ohio’s county commissioners will lobby state lawmakers for legislation permitting early voting on touchscreen machines in Ohio — just like in neighboring West Virginia.

Belmont County Commissioner Mark Thomas, a board member for the County Commissioner Association of Ohio, said the county’s cost to provide elections is escalating each year, and that much of that is due to the price of no excuse absentee voting in Ohio by mail.

The optical scan ballots used for absentee voting in Ohio are expensive to print — nearly $2 a ballot. Postage also is necessary to send out the absentee ballot applications, and to mail the actual ballot. It costs the board at least $3 to send an absentee ballot to a voter.

The cost escalates when a county the size of Belmont County sends out 3,000 absentee ballots for an election, officials noted.

In West Virginia, there is very little voting by mail. Voters instead are permitted to cast ballots as early as two weeks before the election on touchscreen machines set up at their county’s courthouse.

Commissioners met with the Belmont County Board of Elections this week to discuss the board’s proposed budget for 2007, which tripled over recent years to approximately $750,000.

County Director of Elections William Shubat said he has been keeping the commissioners apprised of the reasons for the increasing cost of elections.

“I’d like to see early voting in Ohio,” Shubat said. “They need to do some work legislative-wise so as to deal with some of the problems caused by absentee voting, and the new voting machines. It’s a growing and learning process.

“We’re all just trying to get on the same page for when we go to argue the points.”

The printed length of some of Ohio’s statewide issues in the last two years — some of which were two or more pages long — also has caused its own slate of problems. The result has been an increase in the cost of printing ballots, and county boards of elections also must pay more to advertise the ballot issues in print media.

In addition, voters are facing longer lines at the polls as voters in front of them take time to read the long ballot.

Shubat said lawmakers must deal with the issue of lengthy state ballot issues.

“We can’t have two page issues, especially when there are five of them,” he said. “It takes people a longer time to vote just by reading the issues. They aren’t going to read them before they go. They are going to wait until they’re there.”

Thomas said there will always be long lines at the polls as long as the county utilizes touchscreen voting machines in accordance with the directives of the Help America Vote Act.

While funding through HAVA paid for the machines, the authors of HAVA — among them former U.S. Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio — didn’t anticipate the cost to counties of maintaining the machines.

“We’re about ready to tell the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office that they must take over the elections,” Thomas said. “We as counties can’t handle the cost anymore.”

Commissioner Chuck Probst said the county is bound to using the machines from the Diebold company for the next five years.

“We have been researching all possibilities and examining all ways to save money with elections,” Probst said. “HAVA provides for no money to counties for maintaining these services.

“The Legislature needs to act sooner or later to resolve this. It’s a financial burden — especially to smaller counties. We can’t afford to run elections where are budgets are at.”

Commissioner Gordie Longshaw agreed that HAVA’s authors “didn’t do their homework” when it came to providing funding to counties for elections.

“People are more concerned and skeptical of elections than they ever have been,” he added.

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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 5 announced today that three Ohio counties are meeting the health-based eight-hour outdoor air quality standard for ozone (smog) and proposed to approve a request by Ohio to redesignate the counties to attainment of the national ambient air quality standard.

EPA proposed to redesignate Stark County in the Canton-Massillon area, Allen County in the Lima area and Belmont County in the Wheeling, W.V, -Ohio area.

EPA’s proposed action is based on three years of complete, quality-assured, outdoor air monitoring data for 2003, 2004 and 2005. Available data for 2006 show that these counties continue to attain the eight-hour ozone standard.

EPA also proposed to approve a state plan to maintain the eight-hour health-based ozone standard for at least the next 10 years and to approve motor vehicle emissions budgets for these counties.

EPA’s action will soon be officially proposed in the Federal Register. The public will have 30 days to comment on the proposed action after it is published. Comments may be entered at http://www.regulation.gov. Refer to docket ID No. EPA-R05-OAR-2006-0046 and follow the online instructions for submitting comments. Comments may also be sent by e-mail to mooney.john@epa.gov, or faxed to (312) 886-5824. For additional information, contact Edward Doty at (312) 886-6057.

Ground-level ozone is commonly referred to as smog. Smog is formed when a mixture of pollutants react on warm, sunny days. The pollutants are released from cars, factories and a wide variety of other sources. Smog can cause respiratory problems, including coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath and chest pain.

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