Julie Carr Smyth
Plain Dealer Bureau

Columbus — A state judge delayed Ohio’s effort to replace punch-card bal lots yesterday, after pleas by a voting- machine maker that said it wasn’t treated fairly during state negotiations.

But Secretary of State Ken Blackwell said he has no intention of obeying the judge and allowing the company to sub´ mit a new price offer by Tuesday.

Ohio Court of Claims Judge Fred Shoemaker sided with Sequoia Voting Systems and issued a temporary re´ straining order against Blackwell, who had planned later in the day to an´ nounce a final list of vendors qualified to participate in Ohio’s elections up grade.

“I have reason to believe the plaintiff may have been treated differently than other bidders,” Shoemaker said. He said Sequoia was given just an hour and a half to present its final price offer to state negotiators.

State lawyers argued that Sequoia’s elimination from the field of five final´ ists was the result of weeks of bargain´ ing.

They also asserted that if the judge caused any delay in the state’s ambitious timetable for replacing punch cards, “the po tential harm to the state could be great.”

Within the hour of the judge’s ruling, however, Blackwell an´ nounced that he planned a four- to six-week delay of the process to conduct in-depth security au´ dits of all voting machines that will be sold in Ohio. He said he planned to announce the security review before the restraining or´ der was imposed, though it pro´ hibited him from naming which vendors’ machines would be eval´ uated.

Blackwell acknowledged that the review was prompted, in part, by a Johns Hopkins Univer´ sity study that purported to find security flaws in the source code used by Diebold Election Systems, a North Canton-based company that is a finalist in the Ohio bidding.

But he said elections officials around the country, computer scientists and Ohio’s own consul´ tants believe that the problems cited in the report are pervasive in electronic voting generally, not just in Diebold’s machines.

“While one system opened the door for them to walk through, their concerns apply to all [electronic] systems,” Blackwell said.

The state plans to enlist two computer consulting firms, Sci´ ence Application International Corp. and InfoSentry, to scruti nize all machines that Ohio counties will be allowed to buy. SAIC is the same firm conducting a security review of Diebold ma´ chines that was ordered by the governor of Maryland.

As the security review pro´ ceeds, it will take time to de´ termine which vendors will make Ohio’s short list. As part of his ruling yesterday, Judge Shoe´ maker required Blackwell to ac cept a final price offer from Se quoia by 5 p.m. Tuesday — an order Blackwell said he intends to defy.

He said accepting a subse quent bid from Sequoia, after fi´ nal decisions had been made, “would be ultimately detrimental to the public’s confidence in the entire process.”

Blackwell, a Cincinnati Repub´ lican, said that until all the facts in the case have been heard, “I am not going to participate in that sort of sabotage of the sys´ tem.”

He said he has faith in the ne´ gotiation process that his office conducted and will make those arguments in a hearing on the Sequoia matter scheduled for Thursday.

Sequoia spokesman Alfie Charles expressed surprise at Blackwell’s plans.

“All we would like to do is ex´ tend an offer that would provide the best price and best value to the people of Ohio,” he said, “and we don’t feel we’ve had that op´ portunity.”