The duo, Carey, a former small town mayor, and Stivers, a former telephone lobbyist turned legislator whose tour of duty in Iraq last year adds to his ambition to become President of the Senate, says Brunner needs to convince them that the consultants she wants to hire harbor no bias against electronic voting machines and that comprehensive testing she proposes will not produce a repeat of results obtained by California Secretary of State Debra Bowen before they vote to approve it.

In the letter's opening paragraph, the senators said they weren't opposed to testing voting machines and were concerned about resolving questions about objectivity, transparency and objectivity, which they relayed were brought to their attention by unnamed numbers of Ohio's 88 county boards of election.

Zooming in on issues about standards, criteria, and certification, the letter names two of Brunner's chosen consultants by name -- Giovanni Vigna and Matt Blaze -- and alludes to attached articles authored by these men who said they believe voting machines will never be secure.

At the end of their letter, the senators expressed confusion about Brunner's Chicken-Little-like exclamations that a delay of two weeks would either increase the cost or reduce the scope of the work and said that based on their reading of specifics about RFP dates and anticipated project completion, Brunner would have about the same amount of time to test machines and have a completed report ready by November 30th, her real deadline, if the OCB approves the item at its next meeting on September 24th. They said they inquired about this matter last Monday but have yet to receive a response.

Notifying Brunner that she should deliver answers to their 23 questions to the senators in advance of their meeting next Tuesday or Wednesday, the scramble in Brunnerville to comply with the demands of these senators will be intense, especially given Brunner's English-teacher penchant to rewrite what her staff gives her.

Never having before managed the size staff she has now, which Republicans last year said was one of her management shortcomings, the view from some residents of Brunnerville is that the venturi process, which forces all agency work to pass under her eye and pen, ultimately means the agency can only move as fast as she can get work in one door and out the other.

A copy of the letter from Carey and Stivers with all 23 questions is here.

Bowen recently shut down use of the machines in the Golden State after her top-to-bottom test performed by vote system professionals and academics showed the easily hackable machines are not trustworthy.

THE DUST UP WITH HOUSE SPEAKER HUSTED

As we see in this post about the dust up between Brunner and Speaker Husted, a term-limited former footballer and chamber executive from Dayton, asked Brunner to withdraw her proposal until she could provide answers to questions he was receiving from people who had learned about what she planned to when it became public and contacted him. But that didn't happened, Husted said.

Husted: “I didn’t personally have any objections but I had a lot of members and a lot of people who were calling and who were asking me questions that I couldn’t answer.

"I have no preconceived notions about this. Anytime you get into these issues, as we saw in 2000, 2004, 2006 (elections), there are always people who have concerns about voting systems, making sure they’re fair.

“I think it’s important to build the maximum confidence you can have with any study before you go and do it or how can you expect that the results will be respected.

Husted, confessing he has no "specific biases," did raise the specter of what costs will be incurred if these machines are ruled unuseable.

"I do know, though, that we spent an awful lot of money on those machines and we should be getting it right with them,” he said.

Brunner expressed confusion at why anyone wouldn’t want such testing.

Brunner: “There should not be a Republican or Democratic view to ensuring the integrity of Ohio’s voting systems. This test is about fixing our election system in Ohio so we are prepared to run a clean and efficient 2008 presidential election,” she said in a prepared statement.

“The testing of the state’s voting machines is a plan devised to allow testers from both ends of the scientific spectrum, corporate and academic, to conduct parallel, independent testing, allowing for collaboration as needed. All of this is to be managed by the Battelle Memorial Institute, an Ohio research institution with the highest reputation for integrity and objectivity.”

This past Monday, Brunner was turned down and asked to come back in two weeks when she can again ask the OCB to OK $1.8 in federal voting funds to hire two voting-testing companies and a gaggle of academic consultants.