Election 2004: Officials concerned about a shortage of paper votes

By CATHY ZOLLO, crzollo@naplesnews.com
July 7, 2004

The quarter of American voters who will face the same voting equipment that threw the country into presidential mayhem after the 2000 election aren't the only ones elections observers are worried about.

As the November election draws near, the call for verified votes — paper ballots — to be spewed from the growing number of electronic voting machines in use is growing in volume.

And that's just as Florida is wading through problems with electronic voting machines in use in 15 of the state's 67 counties, home to more than half of the state's voting population.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida announced Tuesday that it plans to sue the state over the machine glitch, though officials wouldn't talk about specifics until they file the suit today.

As well, the League of Women Voters of the United States recently withdrew its support of electronic voting machines that don't provide paper ballots, moving to a neutral stance on the issue. And activists assailed lawmakers in Washington over recent weeks, asking for legislation requiring paper receipts.

Elections officials in Miami-Dade County spotted the glitch last summer that affects the iVotronic machines manufactured by Elections Systems & Software. The machines are in use in 11 Florida counties, including Collier and Lee, with the remaining four counties that use electronic voting machines having bought theirs from another company.

In early 2002, Collier County spent roughly $4.3 million for an electronic voting machine system and two years of maintenance from ES&S, an Omaha, Neb.,-based company.

Lee County also bought the same type of machines at roughly the same time, spending $5.4 million to bring the county up to date on election technology and in compliance with the state's Election Reform Act of 2001.

Supervisors of elections from both counties said they've done extensive testing of the machines, and they are confident they will perform as expected in the August and November elections. They say the machines have proven reliable time and time again in dry runs called logic and accuracy tests that come before each election and during elections.

The glitch intermittently scrambles machine serial numbers during the post-election audit when election officials would recount the results of a close race.

ACLU of Florida Executive Director Howard Simon said that could affect recounts in a close election.

"The reason that voting officials and county supervisors (of elections) and other computer experts say that we don't need a paper trail is that the machines have the capacity to produce an audit log in case of a close election," Simon said. "The audit log is supposed to be the alternative to the paper tail, and the audit trail is in question."

Nicole deLara, spokeswoman for Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood, said a fix is in the works and is being tested in Miami-Dade County through Thursday. She was unable to say when, should it work, the state might certify it for use in upcoming elections.

The delay in getting the fix in place sooner, she said, arose because the problem didn't happen consistently, and technicians at ES&S had to re-create it before they could fix it. As well, she said the division didn't learn about the problem until recently.

Hood has come under fire for not making public the problem or addressing it sooner, but deLara said part of the blame lies with Miami-Dade officials.

"The first time the secretary of state learned about it was upon reading an article in the Miami Daily Business Review," deLara said. "The Miami-Dade supervisor of elections was aware of it last summer."

DeLara said notification that came ahead of the article, from the Miami-Dade Coalition for Election Reform, got lost in the shuffle because it was on page six of a nine-page letter dealing almost exclusively with another issue.

"Should somebody have caught it? Maybe," deLara said. "We'd have liked to see that from the supervisor of elections office a year ago."

Simon supports having paper ballots printed for each voter using an electronic machine. But he said that with the delays in implementing the Help America Vote Act, there is no time to get the machines ready to produce paper ballots and have the printers certified prior to the November election.

"At this point it is doesn't make any sense to talk about the paper trail. We are forced to talk about what Band-Aids can be applied to the system to increase voter confidence in the accuracy of the system," Simon said.

Hood and Gov. Jeb Bush have attacked the groups questioning the machines, saying they are undermining voter confidence ahead of an important election, and deLara echoed that concern.

"These groups do a disservice to their constituents," deLara said, pointing to hundreds of successful elections at the local level that have taken place since the state passed the Election Reform Act of 2001. "Florida has taken enormous strides since 2000. . . We are a national leader in election reform. We have some of the most stringent certification standards in the nation."

Activists say just the opposite, accusing Bush and Hood of trying to silence talk of problems with the machines.

"I don't think we're the ones shaking voter confidence," said Pam Smith, nationwide coordinator for VerifiedVoting.org, a California-based, nonpartisan lobbying group.

"When you look at the whole system and you take all those pieces that are supposed to insure a secure vote, you can knock those pins over one at a time."

Besides which, activists say elections haven't been smooth in every place where the machines are in use.

In California, there were problems with poorly trained poll workers, incorrectly assigned ballots and machines that didn't undergo the testing required by the federal government.

And seniors in Broward County seemed to have greater difficulty than younger voters operating the machines. They had double and triple the rate of undervotes than in precincts where the average age was younger, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel recently reported.