The diversity in voting devices doesn't seem likely to change anytime soon. Elections officials and political scientists debated ways to improve the state's elections system Wednesday during Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell's elections summit. A uniform kind of voting is not necessarily the best direction to take. Counties need to have the capability to choose what's best for their voters.
Few states require that all counties use the same kind of voting machine.
Most states, like Ohio, let counties decide. Mr. Blackwell said the concern isn't that all counties use the same device, but rather that the state have universal rules and standards for machines counties choose to use. John Green, director of the University of Akron's Ray C. Bliss Institute for Applied Politics, said it's time to modernize the system, but said he doesn't think there will be one system of voting across counties anytime soon. There are too many different players, too many different interests. In the meantime, Herb Asher, a political science professor at Ohio State University, said discussion likely will focus on updating state standards to require that one method operate uniformly across all counties that use it.