Boost confidence
Our position: An independent audit of the touch-screen system can build voter trust.

Posted July 24, 2004

Secretary of State Glenda Hood has five weeks to convince Floridians that all is well with upcoming elections. And that is no small challenge, due in large part to the former Orlando mayor's stubborn resistance to hear out her critics.

Very clearly, all is not well in the state Division of Elections, which Mrs. Hood manages.

Only this week, for example, did Mrs. Hood ask the agency's inspector general to investigate how and why a large number of Hispanics were left off a disputed list of felons who may have been ineligible to vote.

For months, local election officials complained bitterly that the list was riddled with inaccuracies. Yet Mrs. Hood pulled it from circulation only after losing a court battle to keep the list secret, and the Hispanic omissions were revealed in newspaper reports.

So here we are, once again in the eye of an electoral hurricane, bearing down on the Aug. 31 primary.

Mrs. Hood says she ordered the investigation so that voters will have "the highest level of confidence" in the electoral system when they go to the polls this fall.

Nice sentiment. But why didn't she keep that in mind 16 months ago, when she assumed her duties as secretary of state? It's not as if election irregularities are new to Florida. Preventing a repeat of the 2000 election mess should have topped her priority list.

Instead, Mrs. Hood has assumed an all-too-familiar, aggressively defensive posture in her new position. Not only did she cling too long to the doomed felons list, she spent the last month rebuffing repeated calls for an independent audit of new touch-screen voting machines after irregularities were reported in South Florida.

Why the raised hackles? If the machines are perfectly fine, as Mrs. Hood insists, what better way to prove it than to have them independently tested? What better way to bolster voter confidence?

Instead, Mrs. Hood and her boss, Gov. Jeb Bush, contend that critics are playing partisan politics trying to rile up Democratic voters still smarting from the 2000 election results. But by refusing to order an equipment audit, Mrs. Hood and Mr. Bush simply fuel that queasy sentiment.

The same applies to retrofitting touch-screen machines with a paper print-out. While it's too late for this election cycle, Mrs. Hood should have championed the idea from the outset not spawned yet another lawsuit. A paper trail would better ensure the integrity of elections and boost voter confidence with a visual representation of each ballot cast.

By their very nature, of course, elections are partisan. The electoral process, however, should not be.

The very basis of democracy holds that everyone who is qualified has an opportunity to weigh in at the polls. Mrs. Hood should realize as much, and start doing her job. Time is Mrs. Hood's enemy. Not her critics.