Touch screens clear another legal hurdle

Touch-screen voting machines survived another legal challenge on Friday when an appellate court upheld an earlier dismissal of U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler's lawsuit.

By SARA OLKON

solkon@herald.com

 

A state appeals court Friday tossed out a lawsuit filed by U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler over the state's use of touch-screen voting machines, without a paper record.

The court upheld the right of state election officials to use the paperless system.

Wexler had sued in state and federal court to force the state to require all 15 counties that use touch-screen voting machines to equip them with a paper record that would allow each voter to verify his or her choice before casting the ballot. While recognizing that ''the right to vote is fundamental,'' the opinion held that ``there is no guarantee of a perfect voting system.''

The opinion was co-written by Fourth District Court of Appeal judges Martha C. Warner, George A. Shahood and Melanie G. May.

OFFICIALS APPLAUD

Theresa LePore, supervisor of elections for Palm Beach County, a codefendant in the lawsuit, said she hoped Friday's decision would help restore voter confidence in the touch-screen equipment.

''We are very pleased with the court's ruling,'' said Jenny Nash, spokeswoman for Secretary of State Glenda Hood. ``It really reiterates what we have been saying all along that touch-screen machines are reliable.''

Wexler was out of town and unavailable. Lale Mamaux, his spokeswoman, expressed disappointment: ``As it stands, not every voter in Florida will be guaranteed that their vote will be counted in the event of a close election.''

For her part, Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, chairwoman of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, said Wexler's lawsuit was irrelevant in the first place.

''This lawsuit was purely politically motivated and didn't have any teeth for the voters,'' she said.

Wexler had claimed that Hood and LePore had failed to carry out their statutory duty to ensure that each vote is accurately reported and recorded, because there is no way to manually recount undervotes on the touch-screen equipment.

RULES FOLLOWED

The court held that the duty was to make the rules about how voting should proceed which they did: The state determined that there will be no manual recount of electronic undervotes, since such a review could not determine whether a voter intended to cast a ballot in a given race.

If Wexler doesn't like those rules, the court said, he must challenge them separately.