It's no vote of confidence

 July 28, 2004

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - "Mother?" said retired schoolteacher Carole Pollock to her mother, 88-year-old Naomi Mandelbaum of Lake Worth. "Would you like to try the new voting machine?"

The new voting machine of Palm Beach County is a marvel. It is a computer screen you stand in front of, touching this box and that box to indicate your choices. If you are familiar with bank ATMs, it is easy to use.

"Try it again, mother. Maybe you're pressing too hard," said Naomi Mandelbaum's daughter, standing beside her yesterday as the older woman tried to make her choice on a sample machine in the lobby of the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections office here for just such trying-out.

"Nothing is happening," said the older woman, pressing on the screen.

"Try the eraser end of this pencil," said Stephanie Spillias, a young elections clerk. She leaned over the counter. "That sometimes works."

The new voting machine of Palm Beach County is the future. Millions of people will use similar ones to cast votes in the Bush-Kerry contest. In Florida, 15 of the most populous counties will be using them this November.

"Now, pick a candidate for president," said the daughter, coaching the mother through a sample slate that included Eleanor Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower. The older woman moved her finger over Roosevelt's name, then touched it.

The machine registered it as a vote for Eisenhower. "Oh dear," said Mandelbaum.

"Hmmm. Hmmm ..." said the young clerk. "You know what might be happening? Is the side of your hand touching the screen? You have to make sure it isn't touching. "

Touch-screen electronic voting machines are the emergency response nationwide to the trauma of the 2000 presidential disaster in Florida, when an estimated 100,000 potential votes out of 6 million cast were lost by voters failing to mark their choices clearly, or voting for more than one candidate.

Palm Beach County was ground zero of the debacle. Thousands of elderly voters here contended that because of a badly designed "butterfly"-shaped ballot, their votes for Al Gore were discounted. After court battles, a partial recount favored Bush by 537 votes.

"Try a different finger," said the young clerk.

In the aftermath of what was for millions of Americans a serious shaking of confidence in the integrity of the system, officials cast their lots with touch-screen voting machines. But the technology is unproven at best, open to fraud at worst. A review by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper found that about one of every 100 votes cast on electronic voting machines in the March primary were not counted - a 1 percent loss-rate that roughly matches the 2000 disaster.

Recent tests by computer experts have raised further questions about the vulnerability of the machines to tampering.

A local congressman filed a federal lawsuit this year, asking the court to order installation of paper backup systems in every electronic machine in Palm Beach County. Detractors say the absence of such a backup makes the recounting of votes practically impossible. "That's simply not true," replied Theresa LePore, the Palm Beach supervisor of elections who designed the infamous butterfly ballot and who now champions the new system. Each machine has a memory card that can be "recounted" electronically - if not one vote at a time, at least "in blocks." To be fair, I did not understand the technology she described.

What about older people like Mandelbaum? Won't many of them lose their votes? The 2004 election seems likely to be just as tight as in 2000.

LePore said her office has made voter training "a top priority," though ultimately, "the voter has to take some responsibility and learn to follow instructions."

"The only problems we have are with voters not using the system properly," she said.

In the lobby earlier, when Mandelbaum had failed to get the machine to change her Eisenhower vote to Roosevelt, her daughter had looked at the young clerk, Spillias, and asked what she would suggest next.

Spillias seemed at a loss, then perked up. "Would your mother like a request form for an absentee ballot?"

While mother and daughter considered this, exit polls gave the very close test-election of July 27, 2004, in Palm Beach County, Fla., to Eisenhower, by one vote.