New technology could ease voting confusion in November election

Problems with Florida ballots in the 2000 presidential election led to the implementation of new and improved voting machines.

Stephen Dawkins, staff reporter

One of the most essential parts of a successful democracy is a reliable voting process. So what happens when major flaws cast doubt on the outcome of an election?   
  
The most recent example is the fiasco in Florida during the 2000 presidential election. Bad ballots, bad voting machines, and bad election administration put Florida's election process in the national spotlight.  
  
But the counties in Florida who experienced difficulties are not the only ones with problems. Many other areas in the country still have the kinds of problems Florida 2000 should have taught everyone how to fix. With another presidential election only eight months away, is there a possibility that Tuscaloosa County residents could experience some of Florida's inefficiencies?  
  
Tuscaloosa County Probate Judge W. Hardy McCollum, who oversees elections, said he is confident that Tuscaloosa can evade Florida-type troubles.  
  
"The biggest (problems) they had were equipment problems," he said.  
  
The voting machines and ballots used by some Florida counties became infamous after the 2000 presidential election. The chief culprits of confusion in Florida were the punch-card style voting machines and Palm Beach County's "butterfly ballot." After the national media focused on the hand recount in Florida, many Americans became familiar with terms such as hanging chad, pregnant chad, and dimpled chad, which were used to describe questionable punch-card ballots.  
  
McCollum, who also serves as chairman of the Tuscaloosa County Commission, said he thinks the voting machines used in Tuscaloosa County will prevent major problems. Tuscaloosa voting machines are designed to read mark-sense ballots, a mechanism that is reliable, McCollum said.  
  
"The trend nationally is toward what we use," he said.  
  
Mark-sense voting machines are much more dependable than the punch-card machines used in some areas in Florida simply because of the age of punch-card technology, McCollum said.  
  
"The first computer at the University of Alabama was called Bama Belle," said McCollum, who graduated from UA in 1970. "Programs for this computer were run on punch cards."  
  
Election administrators in Florida must have known the machine technology was dated, but they probably continued to use it because of the cost involved with purchasing new voting machines.  
  
"It always boils down to economics," McCollum said.  
  
Lack of funds to purchase new voting machines is no longer an excuse. In 2002 Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, which designated $3 billion for states to use on election reform. Because most election systems are developed according to state codes, the Help America Vote Act shows the great need the country had for election reform.  
  
Part of the act requires punch-card type voting machines to be phased out in all states, said Douglas Jones, chairman of the Iowa Board of Examiners of Voting Machines and Electronic Voting Systems.   
  
While mark-sense voting machines are relatively dependable, they do have a downside, said Jones.  
  
"With good standards of ballot layout, voter instruction and election administration, (mark-sense ballot) systems meet the highest standards for election integrity anyone has devised," Jones said. "But mark-sense ballots require that the county print enough ballots for the largest expected turnout in an election. This is wasteful in elections where the turnout is low."  
  
A solution for the wastefulness of mark-sense ballots could be ballot-on-demand technology. This would allow poll workers to print a ballot only for people who show up at the polls. This technology is not yet an option.  
  
Wastefulness aside, mark-sense ballots possess many positive qualities. Unlike the "butterfly ballots," mark-sense ballots are easy to read, which lessens the chance of someone casting a vote for someone he or she did not intend to vote for. Confusing ballots were part of the problem in Florida, according to a U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report.  
  
"In Palm Beach County, the so-called butterfly ballot caused people to mistakenly vote for the wrong candidate and to complain of a 'misprinted, misaligned experience in their voting booth,'" the report said.  
  
Mark-sense machines are more dependable than some of the models used in Florida, notably punch-card machines. When a marked ballot is ed into a mark-sense machine, voters know immediately whether their vote has been counted. Also, if the machine malfunctions it will refuse to count votes until the problem is corrected.  
  
Mark-sense machines even have advantages over newer technology, such as touch-screen machines, McCollum said. Most touch-screen machines in use today do not produce a written verification for each vote cast. This causes trouble if the machine's accuracy comes into question because there are no ballots to recount.  
  
"Mark-sense machines store the ballots inside so they're right there if you need to do a recount," McCollum said.  
  
Even though mark-sense voting machines have a good record of accuracy so far, there are dangers if one voting technology becomes standard.  
  
"If that happens, there won't be any competing technology," Jones said. "If we had standardized one technology in 1968, it would have been the hot new technology of the decade: punched cards."   
  
This story was written by Stephen Dawkins, dawki003@bama.ua.edu and edited by Amy Redd redd002@bama.ua.edu.