The view from the Idea Center

You know that phrase, "there's an app for that?" Well, there may be one for counting votes, but Ohio elections officials won't be tapping the "get" button.

This app that has been used in Iowa is something that would have never passed the scrutiny that we have here in Ohio for the way we do election night reporting," said Secretary of State Frank LaRose, the state’s top elections official.

Democratic Party officials in Iowa are still tabulating vote totals from Monday’s caucuses. As of this writing, 71 percent of precincts have reported results.

A new app designed by a company named Shadow (you can’t make this stuff up) was supposed to make the vote-counting process faster and easier. It created quite a mess instead.

In Cleveland weather parlance, it was a “wintry mix” of untested technology, inadequately-trained volunteers and the chaos that naturally comes with Iowa’s quirky caucus system. (We’ve got freezing rain, sleet and snow in the forecast for most of Northeast Ohio for tonight, by the way.)

LaRose, seeking to ease concerns ahead of Ohio’s March 17 primary, said what Iowa went through won’t happen here.

Ohio’s elections officials are officials, not volunteers, he pointed out. They report their vote totals the old-fashioned way, through dedicated phone lines. And the results are compiled by voting machines, not by volunteers doing head counts and coin tosses.

If you want to vote in Ohio’s primary and are not yet registered to do so, do it here, and do it now. The deadline is Tuesday, Feb. 18.

See you bright and early tomorrow morning on the radio,
Amy Eddings

Need to KnOH

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