Nelson: Test touch screens

Under-votes cause him concern

By Bill Cotterell

DEMOCRAT POLITICAL EDITOR

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson has asked the Justice Department to investigate the impact of computer touch-screen voting machines in counties where many black voters live and asked the state to thoroughly test the systems before the presidential election.

"We want an honest and fair election," the Melbourne Democrat said Monday in Tallahassee, denying that Democrats are trying to scare people with memories of the 2000 election debacle.

The touch-screen machines are used in 15 counties where more than half of the state's black registered voters live. Nelson said those counties have had an unacceptable number of people whose votes at the polls weren't recorded by the machines. The paper-ballot system used in Leon and surrounding counties had almost no such "under-votes" in the March 9 presidential primary or the 2002 elections.

In a close race, Nelson said, even a small error rate could decide who gets Florida's 27 crucial electoral votes.

Rather than agreeing to a test run of the touch screens, Secretary of State Glenda Hood renewed her invitation for Nelson to stop by for a personal demonstration. In a letter to Nelson she wrote: "I am disappointed that you have declined these offers" in the past.

A Justice Department spokeswoman in Washington said Nelson's letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft had not been received. In it, Nelson said two counties using touch screens - Collier and Hillsborough - have had historically low voter participation among minorities and are therefore subject to provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that "require special scrutiny" of election procedures.

He cited an analysis of 350,000 presidential-primary ballots by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, which said 2,193 people using touch screens left no vote. That happened with only 176 voters using paper ballots. In a special legislative election in Broward and Palm Beach counties, there were 137 blank ballots in a race decided by a margin of only 12 votes.

"I'd like to know why voters in touch-screen counties are ... more likely than the rest of the state to leave the voting booth without casting a ballot, especially when there's only one race on the ticket," Nelson said. "It's a troubling statistic and one that may reveal a greater problem."

It's possible that some voters went to the polls intending to cast ballots but didn't see anyone they liked. Jenny Nash, an aide to Hood, said that what looks like "under-votes" might actually be "protest votes" by people who wanted to keep a perfect attendance record at the polls but were effectively rejecting everyone on the ballot.

"The touch screens have been used in hundreds of elections in 2002 and this year," Nash said, "and we have not had one report of any malfunction. There is always a number of under-votes, and that's the voter's prerogative."

Nash added that "there will also be some who try to play on people's fears or lack of knowledge to create a sky-is-falling mentality."

Nelson said he wasn't using scare tactics to get Democrats to the polls. But after President Bush won Florida by 537 votes in a hotly disputed election four years ago, Nelson said, the state has an obligation to the nation to be sure things run well this year.

Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho shares Nelson's concern about the touch screens. Sancho said many voters aren't used to computers and might touch the right boxes to vote for candidates - but then accidentally clear the screen.

"It's like we're requiring people to take a technological literacy test here," he said. "Unfortunately, a level of trust is so lacking in today's partisan climate."