Paper ballot receipt drive takes two steps forward
Wexler lawsuit to get a speedy hearing;
 
Published Wednesday, January 28, 2004
by Dale M. King
The drive to provide Florida voters with a paper receipt after they cast their ballots on Election Day is gaining momentum.
A Palm Beach County circuit court judge has paved the way for a quick hearing on U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler’s lawsuit against Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood and Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore.
In addition, county commissioners from Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach County have voted unanimously to ask the state legislature to mandate a paper record of votes cast on electronic voting machines.

LePore has been urged to purchase printers for the county’s touch-screen voting machines, but said that is a matter for legislators to decide.
In the meantime, Judge Karen Miller on Monday granted Wexler’s request for speedy consideration of his litigation that claims Hood and LePore have not ensured an accurate vote count by not providing paper receipts.
Palm Beach is one of 15 Florida counties that use a paperless balloting system.
In his suit filed Jan. 16, Wexler claims that touch-screen voting machines do not provide reliable results because they do not produce a paper ballot and as a result cannot comply with a state law that requires a manual recount when election tallies are tight.
“The law is clear,” Wexler said. “In the event of a close election, a manual recount is required. And with the voting equipment we now use, a manual recount is impossible.”
“It is imperative,” the South County Democratic congressman said, “that we act to correct this problem before the next contested national election.”
“Time is of the essence,” he said Monday.
Wexler wants the court to order that machines be outfitted with printers so voters can verify paper copies of their ballots before voting electronically. The paper record could then be used in a recount.
Quick action on the matter is needed, he said, so the paperless voting procedure can be corrected in time for the Aug. 31 primaries and the Nov. 2 general election.
Judge Miller ordered that portions of the case be heard on an expedited basis. She set a Feb. 6 hearing on motions filed by lawyers for LePore and Hoods to dismiss the suit.
She also granted a change of venue, moving the case to Tallahassee, as was sought by LePore’s lawyer.
In the related matter, the three boards of county commissioners expressed their unanimous dissatisfaction Monday with touch-screen voting tallies by urging legislators to require paper receipts.
Officials are hoping to head off another presidential election fiasco similar to the 2000 “butterfly ballot” debacle.
Broward and Palm Beach counties had to deal with an election recount less than a week into the New Year. On Jan. 6, Ellen Bogdanoff defeated Oliver Parker by 12 votes in the House District 91 race. That triggered an automatic recount in the district that overlaps the two counties.
“After the District 91 election,” Wexler said, “canvassers in South Florida were left with ambiguity as to how to correctly certify the election – and uncertainty now clouds the election results.”
Bogdanoff has been declared the winner of the race.