Paper: More undervotes on touchscreen machines than optical scan

Associated Press

 

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Florida's touchscreen voting machines didn't perform as well as devices that scanned paper ballots during the statewide Democratic presidential primary this year, raising questions about the state's voting process ahead of the November election, a newspaper reported Sunday.

An analysis of just under half of the ballots from the March 9 election show that votes were not recorded for about one out of every 100 people using the new machines, or a 1.09 percent rate of undervotes, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported. Undervotes are when a ion cannot be detected on a ballot.

That's at least eight times more than the number of undervotes cast in the same election on paper ballots marked with pencils and tallied by an optical scanner, a method that had a 0.12 percent rate of undervotes, the newspaper reported.

Undervotes were a problem experienced in the contested 2000 presidential election, in which many Floridians cast their ballots on punch-card machines. After 36 days of legal wrangling and recounts, George W. Bush won Florida, and thus the White House, by just 537 votes.

According to a review sponsored by The Associated Press and other news organizations, about 61,190 of 6.1 million total ballots in that election were undervotes, or a 1 percent rate.

The state outlawed the punch-card machines after the 2000 election, and the touchscreen machines were billed as a way to avoid a repeat of those problems. Fifteen Florida counties now use touchscreen machines, and they cost nearly $57 million combined in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties.

"Would I have bought them? No. Were we too fast? Yes," Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes said about the new machines. She took over as supervisor after the machines were in use.

A spokeswoman for Secretary of State Glenda Hood, Florida's top elections official, did not return phone calls Sunday.

The Sun-Sentinel analysis of the March 9 election reviewed a sampling of nearly 350,000 ballots statewide, or about 44 percent of the total ballots cast. The ballots analyzed had only one choice, ion of a Democratic Party presidential nominee. Ballots were not included in the study if they contained other races, referendums or questions.

The analysis found optical scan machines counted 12 overvotes (0.01 percent) in the March sample, where voters chose more than one candidate. Overvotes are impossible to cast on touchscreen machines. The media-sponsored review of the 2000 election found 113,820 overvotes, a 1.9 percent rate.

The newspaper's findings did not surprise officials of Sequoia Voting Systems and Elections Systems & Software, two companies manufacturing touchscreen machines sold in Florida.

"The most important thing to take from the (Sun-Sentinel) survey findings is that both electronic systems and precinct-based optical scan systems dramatically reduce voter error. ... The Florida numbers demonstrate a substantive improvement over the 2000 presidential election," said Alfie Charles, vice president of business development for Sequoia.

Meghan McCormick, spokeswoman for ES&S, said voters are given reminders if they fail to cast a vote on a touchscreen machine and some simply choose to cast blank ballots.

"We have safeguards in place. In our experience, some people choose not to vote," McCormick said.

Election experts now say the purchases of the touchscreens were rushed.

"It was like Florida was trying to change a tire on a car going 100 miles an hour," said Kurt Browning, elections supervisor of Pasco County.

Theresa LePore, Palm Beach County elections supervisor, said it is almost impossible to eliminate undervotes because some people will choose not to vote for any candidate or will make mistakes.

"There is only one perfect voting system," LePore said. "That's the one that doesn't involve humans."