Election fairness begets voter confidence

OUR OPINION: REVIEW VOTER ROLLS' ACCURACY AND AUDIT VOTE MACHINES

If newspaper reporters can cull felons' names that are wrongly listed as ineligible to vote in official state data,why can't Florida's elections officials? After all, they're trained to ensure the accuracy and fairness of our elections.

Herald reporters last week compared the state's list of potential felons without voting rights to Florida's clemency and corrections offices' information. Pardoned felons are supposed to have their voting rights restored. Yet the Herald found more than 2,000 pardoned felons whose names appear on the ineligible list. These findings give a hollow ring to state officials' reassurances that Florida's voting rolls are as accurate as they can be.

Thousands of Florida voters rightly felt abused by the multiple errors of the 2000 presidential election. Many were wrongly denied a vote. Others wonder to this day if their votes were counted. Gov. Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Glenda Hood have been disappointingly reluctant to take several steps that would reassure skeptical voters that this fall's elections won't be a reprise of the 2000 debacle in which Florida became a national laughingstock.

The accuracy of the felons' list is just one of several concerns. The Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition raised another last week with its request that the state conduct audits to verify the reliability of new electronic-voting technology. The request was quickly rebuffed by the governor and Ms. Hood. The coalition asked for an independent review of the touch-screen voting system used in 15 counties and a random audit of the optical-scan machines in the other 52 counties.

A January report found that the Diebold electronic-voting machines have security flaws that could allow hackers to disrupt voting. And internal tests of the iVotronic voting machines used in 11 counties, including in Broward and Miami-Dade, found flaws in post-election audits designed to verify accurate election results. These findings justify the request for audits. Florida used to require periodic audits of voting equipment, but the Legislature halted them in 1996, citing a lack of money. No price should be too high for a fair, accurate election, a revered democratic right.

A spokesman for the governor turned logic on its head last week by accusing the coalition of trying 'to undermine voters' confidence'' in the state's elections. Quite the opposite is true. The coalition seeks to bolster Florida voters' confidence in urging state officials to make sure that the upcoming elections are fair.

County election supervisors say they are doing everything possible to and verify voter rolls. But who is overseeing their efforts at the state level to ensure that the job is done right? Ms. Hood shrugs off such worries. That's unacceptable. Ms. Hood should order the audits of the voting systems and make enough resources available to erase all doubt about the accuracy of the voter rolls. Action, not rhetoric, will build voters' confidence.