Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is ordering Franklin County and all other 56 Ohio counties that use touch-screen voting machines to provide enough paper ballots for voters who request them in the March 4 primary.

Brunner issued a directive late yesterday with the order, which is a response to concerns raised in a report last month that concluded the touch-screen systems have insurmountable security flaws.

Brunner wants to scrap the touch-screen systems by the fall election and have all 88 Ohio counties use paper ballots that are counted by optical scanners at a central location such as a county board of elections.

Because there is not enough time to make wholesale changes before the March primary, the order is meant to give voters in counties with touch-screens the option of requesting a paper ballot counted by optical scanners to “avoid any loss of confidence by voters that their ballot has been accurately cast or recorded,” according to Brunner's directive.

Cuyahoga County, the state's largest, is switching completely from touch-screens to paper ballots in the primary after Brunner broke a tie by the county elections board over what system to use in the wake of previous problems.

All counties already provide paper ballots for absentee voters, as well as for those who cast provisional ballots if they move and don’t update their registration, or if their names don’t appear in poll books at the precincts.

But Brunner is telling counties to multiply the number of ballots cast on voting machines in each precinct at previous presidential primary elections by 10 percent to determine the minimum number of ballots to print for each precinct.

The counties also are being ordered to provide a secure ballot container for each precinct as well as a private area for voters to mark their ballots, which would be counted at each county’s board of elections on election night.

Brunner told the counties to document and itemize the additional costs they would incur for complying with her directive so that she can seek federal funds or other reimbursement “as funds may become available.”

Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections and president of the Ohio Association of Election Officials, said complying with the order will be difficult with the primary only two months away.

He also raised other potential issues, such as how counties will be able to produce timely results on election night because they will have to combine electronic and optical-scan counts from each precinct.

“Election officials are disappointed that this secretary of state chose to wait until the 62nd day before an election to make such a dramatic and unilateral overhaul of Ohio election rules,” Damschroder said.