State to get federal help for elections

Although Florida will receive $47 million in promised federal money for election reforms, the money won't be used this election cycle.

BY MARY ELLEN KLAS

The computer glitches troubling the touch-screen voting machines in Miami-Dade, Broward and other counties won't have an effect on Florida receiving $47 million in federal money to bring the state into compliance with federal voting reforms.

Florida will be one of 25 states to receive $861 million this week from the federal government as part of the federal Help America Vote Act, Gov. Jeb Bush said Tuesday.

The money will be used to complete a central voting database and buy equipment for disabled voters, Bush said in a statement Tuesday.

''Our efforts to date are in compliance'' with the federal requirements, the governor said. ``Floridians can be confident our state is fully prepared for the upcoming election season and the ones to come.''

IMPROVEMENT PLAN

Florida is getting the money because the state submitted an election improvement plan with the Election Assistance Commission the federal agency in charge of overseeing implementation of the HAVA regulations put in place a complaint procedure for voters who have problems at the polls and put up state-matching money equal to 5 percent of the federal funds.

But the money won't be used until 2005 and 2006, said Jenny Nash, spokeswoman for the Florida Secretary of State. Florida has received an extension until Jan. 2006 to show the federal government that it is in full compliance with the act. It must, for example, show that all voting systems in the state can ``produce a permanent paper record with a manual audit capacity for such a system.''

Members of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, a watchdog group, believe that the problems discovered with the audit functions of the touch-screen voting machines show the state is not in compliance with the act and raise doubts about whether the machines are accurately recording votes.

The coalition cites the problems Miami-Dade officials discovered after municipal elections in May and September last year: The machines did not provide a consistent electronic log of the voting activity to reproduce what happened during the election. Such an audit would need to be done after a close election or for a recount.

In tests conducted in June and October of last year, Miami-Dade elections officials found that when the information was transferred to the tabulating machines, the serial numbers identifying the machines were occasionally corrupted, and in two incidents, votes were lost.

`LET'S NOT KID'

''Let's not kid ourselves; Florida is not in compliance with HAVA, and we are lucky that we have until 2006,'' said Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, chairman of the coalition. ``The only question now is whether the governor is going to make sure that the money is used to implement real reforms or simply to pay off vendors and [for] window dressing.''

Rodriguez-Taseff said the money the state is getting this week shows Florida ``is in compliance with a few technical sections none of which have anything to do with having equipment that really works.''

The Election Assistance Commission held a hearing in May to sort out problems elections officials have had with touch-screen voting machines and will be issuing ''good practice'' guidelines in July.