GOP seeking to exploit its failure to fix system

By Palm Beach Post Editorial

Saturday, July 31, 2004

Top Republicans in Florida dismiss fears of touch-screen voting as a Democratic scare tactic designed to exploit resentment over the 2000 election. They would be the last group one would expect to find parroting U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler's "don't trust the machines" mantra.

But that's the message from the Republican Party of Florida in a mailer designed to get Miami-Dade County GOP voters to use absentee ballots. "The liberal Democrats have already begun their attacks and the new electronic voting machines do not have a paper ballot to verify your vote in case of a recount," says the mailer, which The St. Petersburg Times obtained. "Make sure your vote counts, order your absentee ballot today." The flier sports a smiling President Bush and the phrase "every vote counts."

So the party in power since the 2000 election, the party that actually could have done something to improve voter confidence, is attempting to use its failure to its advantage. No wonder many voters in Florida are confused — and wary.
Absentee ballots are supposed to be for people who can't make it to the polls on Election Day because they will be out of town or they are aged, infirm or without transportation. Votes are cast on paper fill-in-the-oval optical-scan ballots, not computers. Recently, however, political operatives have pushed absentee ballots to assure votes from party loyalists. Elections supervisors are girding for record absentee ballot requests. Palm Beach County Supervisor Theresa LePore is stocking 75,000 request forms, 50 percent more than in 2000.

But absentee voting is prone to fraud, even more so after state lawmakers this year ped the requirement for a witness signature. In Miami's 1997 mayoral race, a man who witnessed the vote of a dead person also witnessed 75 other "votes." The evidence, traced by following the witness' trail, forced a judge to throw out 5,200 absentee ballots, reversing the outcome of the election. With absentees, the poor can be paid for votes, the elderly can be tricked into voting a specific way and the dead can vote.

By ping the witness signature, lawmakers took away a critical defense against absentee vote fraud. Too many absentee ballots had gone uncounted, lawmakers said, because of problems with the witness signature. A recent Palm Beach Post review showed that witness problems did account for about 80 percent of lost absentee votes in the 2002 election. The next biggest mistake: voters failing to sign the ballot. Other mistakes defy imagination: unverifiable signatures; people who pick more than one candidate, which can't happen on touch-screen machines; and illegible or improper marks.

Because they are cast on paper, many Democrats argue that absentee ballots produce the verifiable trail they have been demanding. The hypocrisy is that Republicans, who could have fixed the system, have joined the chorus.