Touchscreens don't scrap 'undervotes'

Lack of paper trail frustrates some officials

BY JOHN McCARTHY
FLORIDA TODAY

In January, Broward and Palm Beach counties conducted a special election to fill an open State House seat.

Six people, all Republicans, ran for the seat. Fort Lauderdale attorney Ellyn Bogdanoff beat Lauderdale-by-the-Sea Mayor Oliver Parker by 12 votes, the closest margin in Florida legislative history. It was the only race on the ballot.

Inexplicably, though, 137 voters took the trouble to go the polls, sign in, go to the voting machines and yet didn't vote.

At least, that's what the electronic voting machines said. And there was no paper trail available to confirm or dispute that.

Election officials and Bogdanoff theorized Democrats showed up to vote, realized there were only Republicans on the ballot and chose not the vote at all.

"They could have just as easily chosen not to vote by staying home," Parker said.

Parker said he is a friend of Bogdanoff and thought she was doing a fine job as a legislator. He goes out of his way to say she won the election and that he doesn't contest that.

Still, he says his experience has convinced him the touchscreen machine shouldn't be used unless they also offer a paper receipt.

He said the 2000 presidential election mess would seem minor compared to what would happen with a similar problem this upcoming presidential decision in November. "Imagine what it would be like if we used these machines and it came down to 12 votes and we had no way to do a recount. . .Whoever loses is going to be convinced the election was stolen."

Kay Clem, president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections, said there are always "undervotes," even in single-issue elections.

During the presidential primary last month, 1,897 voters showed up in Indian River County, where Clem is Supervisor of Elections, at precincts where the primary was the only race on the ballot. Seventeen of those cast no vote according to the voting machines.

Some voters think they have to show up at the polls for each election even if they don't vote or they will be removed from the voting rolls, Clem said. "It sounds silly to you and me. But I've seen it."

It does appear hard to undervote on the touchscreen machines. The machines warn voters twice that they haven't voted in all the races they are entitled to before allowing the voter to finalize the ballot. And the voter's activation card isn't returned until the process is finished. Poll workers collect the cards at the door and direct voters without their cards back to the machine.

Critics worry that those "undervotes" were actually votes that weren't counted by the machine. They point to a 2002 North Carolina election as an example.

In Wake County that fall, voters were given the option of voting early using a touchscreen machine. One machine failed to record about 400 votes, elections workers found out when the number of ballots cast didn't match results the machine was reporting. The affected voters were contacted and most recast their votes.

If that had happened on Election Day, critics say, those vote would have been lost forever.

Though many people don't realize it, touchscreen machines aren't the first voting system not to have a "paper trail" to be used in recounts. Lever machines, used widely throughout the country for most of the 20th century, did not have paper backups either.

Paper ballots are no panacea, either, Clem said, as there would always be debates about paper ballots that weren't filled out correctly, as there was in 2000. "We've proved you can't count paper ballots by hand."