Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner plans a first-of-its-kind audit of votes from the March 4 presidential primaries, saying the outcome should help ensure the integrity of future elections.

Brunner is calling on 11 counties to volunteer for the audit, in which at least 7 percent of the votes cast in each county would be rechecked by hand.

Miami County was the first to step forward. Franklin County might not get to participate because of an apparent tie in a vote on whether to allow a Bexley gas station to sell alcohol on Sundays.

Under the rules set forth by Brunner, the election audits must take place within five days of the official certification of the election results -- April 4 in Franklin County's case -- but only if there's no recount.

If the Bexley gas-station vote remains tied, there will be an automatic recount, and Franklin County will not be eligible for the audit.

Brunner's audit would cover both paper ballots read by optical scanners and electronic touch-screen voting machines. Brunner has proposed eliminating electronic voting before the November general election.

"During her campaign, Secretary of State Brunner talked about elections that could be audited or verified," spokesman Jeff Ortega said. "This is a further step toward that fulfillment."

A 2007 audit of Cuyahoga County's November 2006 election found a number of irregularities, including the loss of some ballots and others that were counted twice. Brunner praised that audit, which was ordered by the county board of elections, and suggested that other checks would be coming to ensure the accuracy of polling across Ohio.

The upcoming audits are to take place in at least 11 counties and will be conducted in an open board session, Brunner's office said. Local elections boards will randomly select precincts that account for at least 7 percent of the votes cast, and bipartisan monitoring teams will count ballots from the presidential primaries by hand.

In the case of optical-scan machines, the hand counts will be checked against the tabulator. With touch-screen machines, the voter-verified paper audit trail will be compared with the summary results.

jnash@dispatch.com

The audit would cover touch-screen machines and paper ballots read by optical scanners.