All signs are pointing to the fact that Cuyahoga County will be “Ground Zero” for this year’s Presidential Election. In 2004 it was Franklin County, Ohio. I’m not sure why it was Franklin in 2004.  There were no major controversies in Franklin; certainly no major concerns about machine distribution prior to the election. Nevertheless when I arrived at work about 5 am I couldn’t help but notice all the major news networks parked in the lot with their satellite trucks up and running. It was not a great sign.

But this year they will be up north--for good reason. Yes, it was a good idea to replace the director and deputy director and the board members at the CCBOE. But what has happened is that the new top officials have virtually no election experience. All 4 board members are attorneys, and none of them have specific election experience. The director is the only one with experience, and her election experience is less than 5 years. The deputy director worked at the SOS in years past, but he has never worked a day at an election office, and apparently got his job by having friends in high places (that’s part of why CCBOE just can’t run elections). His hiring is clearly in violation of the SOS Directive 2007-01 (provided here). So here we have about 4 years of experience between all 6 top officials! And that spells trouble.

It’s too depressing to look into the past mistakes of the CCBOE. A few notable screw ups come to mind. But mostly their problems remain technical and unfortunately they aren’t led by people who understand technology. For example, they bought into Diebold’s claim that their newly purchased voter registration product (DIMS) provided a “seamless integration” to their tabulation system. But their VR system was clearly not integrated into the GEMS system; and this much is shown over and over again in various reports at the CCBOE. Anyone with ANY experience in this industry could have seen that this was an issue. But they fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. 

I love how the report recommends dragging in the Diebold people to explain how they conned the CCBOE into buying their VR system. The report argues that it was Diebold’s fault; they were so persuasive about their products. The truth is that the CCBOE exercised bad judgment and people there should have been held accountable. My God, vendors are always playing up their products. It is the role of the management at the BOE to analyze and to do their due diligence with these products. Diebold has their share of problems, but it’s hard to believe that in this day in age they could be accused of being “overly persuasive”!!  

In November 2007 the GEMS tabulation server apparently locked up a couple of times on election night. No one has been able to explain this situation. This event was even featured in a New York Times Magazine story (see this link). The open paragraph is telling. Jane Platten, the Director, remarks, “I guess we’ve seen how technology can affect an election”. 

Note the subtle blame-shift. It’s the technology that is causing all the problems, but not the management at the CCBOE. But someone has the job of managing the technology.

Last week I taught the certification course on technology for the Ohio Association of Elections Officials. In that class I tried to stress that technology is just a tool—it can be used wisely or unwisely. But in the end you have to manage the technology, and you are responsible for the wise or unwise management of it. Don’t blame the machines, the vendors, the SOS, the public, or anything else for your failures.The failure at the CCBOE continues to be primarily the result of not understanding the role that technology plays in running modern elections. It comes from staffing the place they way they have always done—load it up with political operatives that are interested first and foremost in political gains, and that have very little concern for election administration. Has anyone at the top ever stayed in election administration after leaving the CCBOE? Well, perhaps Michael Vu, but he was an outsider when he was hired.

The upshot is that the CCBOE remains poorly run. It will continue to be poorly run and elections in Cleveland will continue to be plagued by intractable problems. Over the conference last week I heard from several smaller counties that they are tired of being ‘punished’ by Cuyahoga’s problems. Since the CCBOE is so bad, we change the structure of the entire state—and that doesn’t sit well with everyone. Such remarks were even noted in a recent Columbus Dispatch article.

The media and election groupies will be coming to Cleveland this fall. They will huddle there waiting to see the CCBOE screw up. We can only hope that they don’t. But if history is any guide, expect a screw up from the CCBOE and the criticism of the state that follows. The rest of us in Ohio deserve something better than the current inept group.