The Summit County Board of Elections wants to save about $50,000 and reduce the number of discarded ballots. So they voted Tuesday to reduce their order of ballots from over 450,000 to about 400,000. Some expect turnout at the polls to be down thanks to early voting, but the deputy director of the board of elections believes the move could be a mistake.
Bryan Williams says he's trying to convince the board to order more ballots since the public still has over a week to register to vote, and mistakes at the polls could force voters to use up to 3 ballots.
WILLIAMS: I'm very worried. I think it's going to have to sink in. There's time to order more ballots. I think our number today is too low. And I think they'll be amenable once they understand that we're still putting new voters onto the system and once they understand that provisional voters haven't been accounted for.
Part of the problem is that the new optical scan ballots cost many times more than the now-defunct punch-card ballots used in 2004.
Williams says the board prints more ballots on election day if precincts start running low, but if more than 10 or 15 need extras, Williams says it could cause chaos.