Florida senior voters have trouble with electronic voting machines

BY JEREMY MILARSKY

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

 

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - (KRT) - Broward County's senior voters apparently had more trouble than most with relatively new electronic voting machines during this week's Democratic presidential primary, a development that has local party leaders worried about flawed ballots in November's presidential race.

At polling locations in which the only choice was who should get the Democratic presidential nomination, 169 people arrived at the polls and - for whatever reason - did not a candidate, records show.

Almost half of those "undervotes" - 80 ballots - were cast in precincts where the average voter is 65 years or older, according to a South Florida Sun-Sentinel review of voting records.

Undervotes could account for up to 4,000 of the ballots cast in November's presidential race in Broward, if historical trends hold.

"That's a frightening statistic," Broward County Democratic Party Chairman Mitch Caesar said. "We have a large number of folks who are elderly and not comfortable with these machines."

The 2000 presidential election was arguably decided by a controversial 537-vote margin in Florida. Broward has about 1 million registered voters and the highest number of Democrats in the state.

According to a representative sampling by the Sun-Sentinel, senior-only communities accounted for four of the top five polling locations with the heaviest undervoting. While the countywide average undervote was about 1 percent, the undervote rate in these precincts ranged from 2.9 to 5.7 percent.

The newspaper ranked precincts by how many undervotes were among the total ballots cast in each precinct, eliminating those in which less than 100 total ballots were cast, showing a cross-section of Broward County voters, younger and older. That sample included 57 of the 224 precincts targeted for review.

Precincts with municipal races were eliminated, for example, to account for voters who might have opted to make a choice in a local race and not the presidential contest.

Of the top five undervoting precincts in the sample, there was only one in which the average voter was younger than 65: precinct 104R in Fort Lauderdale's Melrose Park.

The top precinct was 13A in Deerfield Beach's Century Village East, where 10 undervotes accounted for 5.7 percent of the total votes cast. In precinct 20M in Sunrise Lakes Phase 3, six undervotes accounted for 3.5 percent of the votes. In precinct 18A, also in Century Village, five undervotes accounted for 3.3 percent of the votes. In the Melrose Park precinct, four undervotes accounted for 3.2 percent of the total votes. In Plantation's 16N precinct in Lauderdale West, four undervotes accounted for 2.9 percent of the votes.

Amadeo "Trinchi" Trinchitella, an 87-year-old Deerfield Beach city commissioner who represents Century Village East, reacted to that news with the same alarm as Caesar.

"That's too many (undervotes)," Trinchitella said. "Some of our people are elderly, sick whatever. But it doesn't matter. We have a right to vote, and I think there should be every safeguard."

Despite Tuesday's voting results, not every senior had trouble with the voting machines.

"The machines are very easy for me." said David Paris, 82, president of Sunrise Lakes Phase 3's condo association.

Voter turnout in Broward County was only about 17 percent this week. But in a typical presidential race in November, the turnout reaches 40 percent, with seniors often voting in even higher numbers.

South Florida has become more sensitive to voting problems since the 2000 presidential election, when the state became the butt of jokes, in large part because of flawed paper ballots. The debacle led to ATM-like voting machines in South Florida. Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the likely Democratic presidential nominee this year, has said his campaign will watch Florida closely for problems.

County officials hoped to eliminate voter errors with the new machines. Since then, the debate has been about how much room for improvement there really is.

Trinchitella supports an effort by U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, to force Florida's electronic voting machines to produce a "paper receipt" that would warn voters one last time about an undervote. Currently, the county's voting machines warn voters twice on a computer screen, but not on paper.

Receipts would create a paper trail for recounts, Wexler and others argue.

Wexler filed a federal lawsuit Monday to compel the state to equip voting machines with printers. "Right now, there's no way for me or anyone else to say, `Yes, that's an intentional undervote,' or, `No, it's (a machine error),"" Wexler said Friday.

Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood has said that paper receipts are not needed for the state's voting machines. Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes has not taken a position on the matter.

Steve Mastorakos, a spokesman for Election Systems & Software of Omaha, Neb., defended how his company's product had been received in Broward.

"We get a favorable response from voters of all ages, including seniors," he said.

Wexler and other elected officials began pushing for paper receipts in the wake of a special state House race on Jan. 6. In that election, more than 10,000 people cast ballots, but in Broward County, 134 of them cast undervotes in an election decided by a 12-vote margin.

"There have always been people who do not vote correctly," said Sunrise Mayor Steve Feren. "But that doesn't mean the system is perfect. Obviously, it's not, because we're still having undervotes."