Miami-Dade orders pre-election assessment to boost voter confidence

By Tania Valdemoro
Miami Bureau South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Posted August 4 2004

Miami · Angry that county elections officials temporarily lost voter data from past elections, Miami-Dade County Commission Chairwoman Barbara Carey-Shuler on Tuesday demanded that county officials take steps to restore voter confidence.

In an unusually forceful memo to County Manager George Burgess, Carey-Shuler called for the county's Office of the Inspector General and its Audit and Management Department to assess the county's election process by five days before the Aug. 31 primary.

Carey-Shuler also asked the Elections Department to spell out to county commissioners by Aug. 16 how it will keep and store voting data, how voting machines will be tested and how the department plans to inform voters of options such as paper or provisional ballots.

She also demanded an analysis of the department's electronic records from the disastrous September 2002 primary election the same records elections officials last week temporarily declared "missing" to shed light on why the county's iVotronic touch-screen machines did not record 1,544 votes in 31 predominantly black precincts during the gubernatorial contest between Democrats Bill McBride, Janet Reno and Daryl Jones.

"At this point, with less than 30 days before the 2004 primary, I find it unacceptable that our ability to conduct a proper election is being questioned locally and nationwide," Carey-Shuler wrote in the Aug. 2 memo.

The chairwoman's moves come several days after Carey-Shuler vowed to "get to the bottom of what was going on in the Elections Department." They also follow an elections workshop she convened, in which Carey-Shuler was dissatisfied with Elections Supervisor Constance Kaplan's explanation for the misplaced data.

"I didn't like her answer that well, [that] the state didn't require the county to do an audit of the machines," Carey-Shuler said. "I wanted to find out about the campaign awareness plan telling voters about using paper ballots, but I didn't hear about it," she said. "It wasn't really convincing that these things were going to happen."

Kaplan could not be reached for comment. Her spokesman, Seth Kaplan, who is not related to Constance Kaplan, said that the supervisor received Carey-Shuler's memo and has reviewed it.

"She agrees with the sentiment that we have to be doing everything possible to run the freest and fairest elections," he said.

Voter advocates were pleased to hear that county officials were taking more steps to prevent possible Election Day mishaps.

"We are pleased to see that Commissioner Carey-Shuler is committed to ensuring that every vote counts in the next election cycle," said Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, chairwoman of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition. "But this doesn't mean we can breathe a sigh of relief yet."

But Rodriguez-Taseff said the audits of the county's elections process must be done according to state guidelines.

"If done well, these audits can show us the truth and fix problems," she said. "If done poorly, these audits will only cover up problems and give voters a false sense of security."

Other activists questioned the timing of the reports, as both audits will be made public five days before the Aug. 31 primary.

Max Rameau, of the Miami Workers Center, said activists will have little time to take action before the primary if the audits reveal new election problems. He predicted Constance Kaplan and the Elections Department will withhold information about election problems.

Rameau alleged Kaplan had not told the public until this May that the touch-screen voting machines had a glitch that mixed up the serial numbers of the voting machines.

Orlando Suarez, director of the county's Information Technology Department, first warned Kaplan of the glitch recently fixed by the manufacturer, Omaha-based Election Systems & Software in an October 2003 memo.

"The Elections Department knew about these problems [but] they never reported them to the public," Rameau said. "This is stuff [members of] the elections coalition had to find out themselves."