State bans recounts of touch-screen ballots

By Scott Wyman
Staff writer
Posted February 14 2004

State elections officials banned any attempt to recount votes cast on touch-screen voting machines Friday, reversing an earlier decision as counties prepare for the presidential primary less than a month away.

During the recount of January's close legislative election in Broward and Palm Beach counties, the state decided to leave it up to each county whether to print out images of each ballot from the voting machines.

But that led to concern among county officials that candidates could challenge election results and lead to uncertainty if each county handled a recount differently during a major election. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled at the end of the 2000 election that the differing standards used in Florida's highly watched recount violated the Constitution.

Under its new ruling, the state Elections Division concluded that counties are not permitted to print out ballots. State law requires uniform standards and sets none when it comes to counties with touch-screen ballots because there is no way to discern voter intent other than what is registered on the computer, the state concluded.

The elections supervisors of Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties joined colleagues from other Florida counties with touch-screen voting machines in asking the state for more guidance about what to do.

The state election administrators concluded that the Legislature was aware that there could be no manual recount with the ATM-style machines when legislators rewrote election law after the 2000 election. The only work needed during a recount with the machines is to recalculate individual totals from each machine to ensure there is no mathematical error.

In fighting his 12-vote loss at the polls on Jan. 6 to Ellyn Bogdanoff in the state House District 91 race, Oliver Parker, then mayor of Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, had demanded election officials find a way to recount the votes cast on the touch-screen voting machines. He wanted to know what happened to 137 instances in which someone cast a ballot but did not vote for any candidate.

The state decision did not address the campaign under way among some elected officials and political activists to have voters review printed receipts of their ballots before they are cast on the touch-screen machines.

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